


Vicissitude

by CelestialSilences



Series: The WayV Files [1]
Category: NCT (Band), WayV (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Alternate Universe- Take Off MV, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But then again so is Ten, Everyone's sad until they're not, Johnny is an idiot in love, Just sad but it gets better in the end, Language, M/M, Pining, So is the rest of NCT, The units are closer than family, This isn't dark I promise, WayV are spies, kind of, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-04-12 15:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19135198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestialSilences/pseuds/CelestialSilences
Summary: Ten and Johnny are spies with a...complicated history, to say the least.Ten eagerly drinks in the sight of him despite himself- he'd forgotten how gorgeous Johnny looked in a suit, so effortlessly confident and debonair.He feels the briefest pang of sharp fondness and shoves it down with a vengeance.





	1. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ten tries to steal a hard drive, only to discover he's not the only person after it.

There’s nothing quite as shamelessly decadent yet appallingly beautiful as the modern gala. This one, held at a mansion that might be better described as a palace, is of course no exception. The modern upper class has a distinct love for opulence, after all.

The wine here flows more freely than water despite each bottle being centuries old, and the appetizers are minuscule yet cost in the hundreds of thousands of won for just a single bite. 

The guests are a special brand of ethereal, swathed in gilded dresses and suits and dripping with diamonds every color of the rainbow. Their faces are coated with makeup and their false smiles are permanently affixed as they socialize, partaking in the clockwork-smooth interactions that are the specialty of the richest of the rich. There’s a special kind of elegance to the way they move and dance, in the perfection of their routines. Galas are some of the best places to people-watch- there, one can freely observe the strange, plastic mating dance of the one percent. 

Of course, the setting is every bit as lavish as those who occupy it. There is no modern flair here- this is the kind of gala peasants once started revolutions over. Like something out of a movie, the ballroom of the mansion is all high ceilings and cathedral-like grandeur. Everything is delicately crafted from marble so spotless it easily reflects anything nearby, and anything that can’t be made of stone is of gold or crystal. 

It’s really a shame Ten can’t enjoy any of it.

...Although, to be fair, even if he were mingling among the guests without a care in the world he probably still wouldn’t be having a great time. Ten’s idea of aesthetic perfection is far more refined than the gaudy, ostentatious theme of this particular gala.

It definitely beats crawling through a ventilation shaft, though, which is what Ten is currently doing. This building is old, and the metal tunnel he’s in likes to give ominous creaks every so often when it decides it doesn’t like how he’s shifting his weight. Judging by the faint sounds of classical music and snooty laughter filtering into the shaft, he’s right above the party. If the ventilation system decides to fuck him over and collapse, which isn’t altogether unlikely, he’d make his grand entrance to the gala by falling about ten meters from the ceiling and probably breaking his neck. Fun times. 

And Ten doesn’t _mind_ any of that, not really -nothing gives him a lovely adrenaline high quite like the fear of impending death- but something about this mission hasn’t sat well with him since Kun had first explained it. Call it his cynicism shining through, but the whole thing just seems a little _too_ easy. He sneaks in through an air vent, steals a hard drive from a supposedly unsecured office, and sneaks out through a window to a waiting escape van. On paper, it’s laughably simple. 

In practice, too, things have gone off without a hitch. Sicheng had disabled the security cameras, Ten snuck in through a window easily, and the vents have yet to cause any substantial issues for him. Speaking of his handler, though-

“Winwin, you copy?” Ten whispers, careful to keep his voice even so his hacker/handler for the evening won’t get unnecessarily worried. 

There’s a tiny hum of static in his ear and then Sicheng’s low voice comes through his comm. “Obviously. How are things in the vents?”

“Fantastic,” Ten snarks, because they both know Sicheng listened to him bitch for the first five minutes of climbing, and yet he still has the audacity to ask like he has no idea. “Just wonderful. You should join me.”

“Nah,” Sicheng snickers, clearly enjoying Ten’s suffering like the sadist he is. “I much prefer being in this nice, comfy van. You know, where I can stretch out and relax.”

“It’d be a real shame if something happened to you before you could get home tonight,” Ten hums in reply, words dripping with false pity. 

Sicheng huffs a laugh. “It’d also be a real shame if I decided to drive home right now and let you walk back to the apartment.” 

Ten’s halfway tempted to fire back, already has a snippy joke in mind, but Sicheng’s petty enough to follow through on a threat like that and the walk home is multiple hours- no cutting comment is satisfying enough to be worth that. 

Besides, he’s finally right above the home office where the hard drive is, and he tells Sicheng as much. 

“The room shouldn’t have any kind of security in it, but keep an eye out in case I’ve missed something,” he reminds as Ten quietly undoes the vent cover built into the office’s ceiling. Bless the strange architecture of Rich People Mansions for making his job so easy. 

“No faraday cages or anything this time, right?” he checks, voice hushed so any cameras Sicheng may have missed won't pick up his voice. 

“Shouldn’t be, but I guess we’ll find out,” Sicheng replies. The last mission they’d done -a messy ordeal for more reasons than one, nearly ending in Yukhei getting shot- had cut Sicheng off completely from the team, as most rooms in the building had been specially designed to block any kind of external signal. It had been terrifying, being left so totally removed from the angel (or devil) on his shoulder, and Ten’s not eager to repeat the experience again anytime soon.

“Alright,” Ten whispers, carefully setting the grate down next to him and positioning himself for the fall. “Going in now.” 

He drops fluidly from the ceiling, landing easily on his feet with the kind of catlike elegance that only comes from years of experience. His boots sink into plush carpet and barely make a sound, and Ten straightens up smoothly. He takes in the room and its high bookshelves, interspersed with paintings probably worth more than everything Ten’s ever owned put together, the dual-monitor computer setup-

-And the person rifling through the desk below said computers. 

Ten’s first thought -desperate hope, more like- is that it’s the owner of the mansion, or maybe just some wasted partygoer. He can lie his way out of the situation if either of those things are the case. 

But something about the way the person is searching - they’re facing away from him, so he can’t see their face, frustratingly- suggests both sobriety and something that could almost be labelled professionalism. Whoever they are, they have a purpose. Ten can only pray they’re not after the same thing he is. 

_Hello, difficulty_ , he thinks dryly, because he _knew_ something like this would happen. No mission’s ever easy. 

Creeping a little closer, Ten shifts slowly into a stance to jump the person when they turn around, carefully angling himself to stay out of their line of sight. They continue to shuffle through the items in one of the desk drawers, oblivious to Ten’s presence. 

As Ten watches, every inch of him stock still and rigid, ready to strike at a moment’s notice, the person shuts the desk drawer and heaves a quiet sigh, raising their head up for Ten to see for the first time-

It’s _him_. 

Ten unconsciously brings a hand up to his ear and disconnects his comm with a _click_. 

It’s like someone moved everything in the room a few centimeters to the left while Ten blinked; the office is technically the same, but everything feels different, off-kilter. And if the room is off-balance, Ten is so disoriented the floor may as well have fallen out from under him. 

A lesser agent might have frozen or otherwise given themselves away, but Ten has the self-control to recover physically even if his mind is still in a state of deer-in-headlights shock. He creeps up behind him, tries to pretend he’s just another target. It’s easy enough if he can’t see his eyes. He’s merely another enemy agent, another faceless suit that Ten will dispose of and move on from without a second thought. 

(A lie, but the truth is too painful to be considered).

But Johnny always was perceptive, perhaps too much so. Ten isn’t nearly close enough to attack when he whirls around, instantly pressing into the desk to put as much space between him and his attacker, hands curled into fists and held up to block any incoming punches. Textbook perfect response. 

Ten eagerly takes in the sight of him despite himself- there are dark circles under Johnny’s eyes he’s hiding with concealer, and his hair is a pretty shade of brown, now. Ten had forgotten how gorgeous he looked in a suit, so effortlessly confident and debonair. He feels the briefest pang of sharp fondness and instantly shoves it down with a vengeance. 

There’s no answering affection in Johnny’s eyes- at least, none that Ten can see. Only defensiveness and something sharp and analytical, like a proper agent. Although, if he looks carefully, he can see the slightest hint of shock in Johnny’s posture in the way he’s just barely slumped against the desk, in the wideness to his eyes.

Ten knows it won’t give him an advantage. Johnny's fierce professionalism was always something he admired and feared in equal measure. He chooses to play up the shock card anyway, on the off chance he can wheedle some kind of information out of him. 

“Good night for a heist, isn’t it?” he remarks casually, shifting his weight to the side and cocking his hip to affect confidence he doesn’t feel. He offers Johnny a winning smile, careful to keep it bright and not flirtatious. “Everyone’s out, it seems.”

“What are you doing here?” Johnny asks, which is a stupid question, because just about anyone could walk into the room right that second and figure out exactly what he’s doing. Ten sympathizes- this interaction is too surreal and complicated and he doesn't really know what to say, either. 

“Same thing you are,” he hums. His voice sounds too sharp and loud to his own ears, and he desperately hopes it’s just his imagination. “Unless you aren’t here to commit a crime?”

Johnny lets out a strangled noise that might have been a laugh in its infancy but comes out more like a wheeze. He doesn’t look like he knows quite what to say, so Ten helps him and asks another, easier question. 

“Speaking of which, how did you even get in here?” The ventilation shafts aren’t exactly big enough for two. Asking mundane questions like this is good, too; they help Ten center himself and focus again. Plus, if Johnny’s distracted, he’s less likely to notice Ten edging towards the window. Fuck the hard drive, honestly- he’d much rather leave with his dignity intact. 

Johnny looks vaguely confused, the first genuine emotion he’s seen on his face. “Infiltration? The standard way- a fake backstory and a ticket.” 

“Goddammit.” Ten’s gonna _kill_ Sicheng later. Better yet, maybe he’ll hide one of his laptops in the ventilation system of their apartment so he has to climb in there and get it-

“Ten,” Johnny says, reaching up to his ear and pressing something. The moment his hand drops, his whole demeanor changes, softening so much he almost looks like a different person. “ _Ten_.”

Ten has been stabbed and burned and shot before, but the ache that springs to life in his chest at the sheer affection in Johnny’s voice hurts worse in that moment than any pain he’s ever felt. He wants to rip his own heart out to spare it from the agony he’s feeling. Some power stronger than logic or reason or professionalism makes him take a small step forward, and the hurt in his chest eases ever so slightly.

The way Johnny’s face lights up at the simple movement, suddenly so soft and sweet and _loving_ makes Ten’s breath catch. He can’t do anything but stare, drinking in the face of the man he’d never thought he’d see again. It's like a dream, almost, but without the idyllicism such reveries bring.

(He wouldn't have it any other way.)

Johnny takes two slow steps forward, moving the way one might approach an easily spooked animal, hands reaching toward Ten almost of their own accord. 

There’s a moment where the two of them just stare at each other, trying to communicate every second of the two years they’ve been apart by eye contact alone. It doesn’t work, of course, but Ten feels the longing in Johnny’s eyes like a bullet to the chest, and the pain in his heart doubles. It’s a miracle he hasn’t sunk to the floor and started bawling yet. 

Johnny sees it too, because Johnny can always sense when people are hurting, and his expression softens to something profoundly tender and mournful. He moves to close the last of the distance between them, still reaching towards Ten almost reverently. Ten closes his eyes for the briefest of moments.

Then he leaps back so far his back presses against the cool glass of the window behind him.

“Don’t think for a second I trust you not to bug me,” Ten snaps, voice shaking and brittle and oh-so-pained, and with one agonized sentence their fragile reverie is shattered. 

The look on Johnny’s face is so utterly anguished Ten can’t bring himself to look at him. He instead focuses his gaze on the wall just above his head, glares at the still life hanging there like it’s personally offended him. “I’m not stupid. You’re still just as much of a puppet as you used to be.”

Johnny shakes his head rapidly. A lock of hair falls into his eyes, and if they were anywhere else -anyone else- Ten might have fixed it for him. Instead, one hand creeps behind his back and undoes the window latch. The faintest hint of summer air rushes in, and Ten meets Johnny’s eyes again with the newfound confidence that comes with having an easy out. “Who do you love more, Johnny?” His voice cracks when he says his name, and Johnny’s eyes squeeze shut for a fraction of a second. “Me, or SM?”

The silence in the room is deafening. Johnny opens his mouth, features wrought in pain, but not a word comes out.

Ten smiles, a wry, fake thing almost akin to a grimace. “That’s what I thought.” 

“Ten, _please_ ,” Johnny begs, takes another step forward, “Of course it’s you, it’s always been you-”

Ten doesn’t bother listening. Anything Johnny says now is two years and a million missed opportunities too late. He shoves the window open fully and, stretching his arms out like wings, he lets himself fall out of the window and into the night. 

A bit dramatic, sure, but it helps him feel a little better. Bonus points if Johnny thinks he’s hurt from the fall. (He won’t, of course, because Johnny knows him better than he knows himself, but it’s a nice thought nonetheless.) 

Ten slams the button to reconnect his comm with a little more force than strictly necessary, and is immediately greeted with a profanity-laden rant from Sicheng in an impressive blend of Mandarin, Korean, and English. 

“Are you done?” Ten asks, when Sicheng’s curse words start to get repetitive.

“No, you fucking asshole,” Sicheng snaps, and Ten can’t help but smile to himself in the dark. There’s nothing quite like listening to Sicheng’s emotionally constipated form of fretting to help him forget about what just happened. “What were you _thinking_? You were in there for twenty goddamn minutes, and I _told_ you to get the fuck out of there if there was interference before we even got here. I thought you were dead, you dumbass. I should have left you and started driving home.”

“You want a hug when I get back to the van?” Ten teases. The pain in his heart is easing with every step he takes away from the mansion, and his excellent repression skills are already making what happened feel as distant as a dream. He’ll be fine soon, and things will go back to the status quo. 

“God no,” Sicheng snaps. “I can’t believe you, next time I really will leave you behind-”

Two minutes later, when Ten knocks on the side of the van and lets himself in, the first thing he does is envelop his handler in a hug. Sicheng huffs but accepts it, winding his arms around his fellow agent gently. Ten smiles into his shoulder, and if he leaves wet stains on Sicheng’s jacket when he lifts his head back up, he knows Sicheng of all people certainly isn’t going to bring it up.

“So,” Sicheng begins when they’re on the road and mansion is a distant blur of lights behind them. “Where’s the drive?”

“Gone,” Ten lies easily. “Wasn’t anywhere in the room I looked.”

“Damn,” Sicheng sighs. “That’s gonna make things harder.” 

Ten doesn’t apologize, knowing there’s no point in such an empty gesture. They’ll find a way around the setback- they always do. 

“By the way,” Ten says pleasantly when they’re in the elevator to Rainbow V’s (Just V for short, if you listen to Yangyang) floor in their apartment complex, “If you ever send me crawling through vents again when I could’ve just done infiltration, I’ll end you.” 

Sicheng laughs, annoyingly cute for someone who’s the literal devil. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he replies, clearly implying he’ll be sending Ten back into a ventilation system as soon as humanly possible. 

...Maybe Ten really will steal his laptop and hide it. 

Debriefing is short, which Ten had expected- the mission resulted in nothing gained for them and he can’t exactly be blamed if the drive “wasn’t there.” Several times Ten opens his mouth, ready to mention Johnny’s presence at the manor, but he can never quite get the words out. It feels too much like spilling a secret he’d been trusted to keep. 

“This all seems way too easy, doesn’t it?” Yangyang points out, chin resting on his hand and looking for all the world terribly bored- except for his eyes, which are bright and analytical as always. “Think about it- the last job we did, the one in Japan, the security was insane even for the small stuff. And now a much more professional company is leaving a whole hard drive with weapon schematics on it just sitting in some guy’s unsecured mansion?”

“Well, some people are just stupid,” Sicheng replies. “It’s weird the drive wasn’t where it should have been, though.”

“And SM hasn’t even touched this one, despite it being exactly the kind of thing they’d be all over,” Dejun adds with a slight frown. 

Ten opens his mouth and closes it. He really should say something- the rest of his team needs to know if there’s a risk of someone less friendly making an appearance during their next mission. Johnny would never hurt anyone in Rainbow V, but Ten can’t extend that same certainty to most of the people he knows who are still under an SM contract. Information like that can be the difference between life and death for an agent, but his mouth still stays stubbornly closed. Lord knows why; probably some blend of leftover loyalty to Johnny, fear of judgment from his members, and good old-fashioned stupidity. 

“Something wrong, Ten?” Guanheng asks. “You’ve been quiet.”

Ten fiercely wills himself to tell the truth and still nothing comes out. “No,” he lies instead. “I just don’t like this.” 

“No one does,” Kun says sympathetically, “But BlackBox is too dangerous for us to let them keep operating. Even if things are weird, we need to work around it and shut them down.”

“Easy missions are good, honestly,” Yukhei jokes. “Less likely you’ll end up like this.” He waves his right arm around, wrapped carefully in a sling, to emphasize his point. 

Another wave of guilt hits Ten- SM could cause another one of his members to end up like that again because he isn’t talking. But if he brings it up now, things look even worse- he’d lost the drive, lied about it, and all because he couldn’t get his feelings under control long enough to incapacitate Johnny. 

He knows he’s being dumb, unprofessional, and an overall self-centered asshole. He feels about eight times worse. But still, the words don’t come, and the meeting adjourns with Kun telling everyone to stay on their guard. 

“We wouldn’t want SM to figure out what we’re doing if they haven’t already,” he says, and Ten barely resists the urge to shrink into his seat and wince. 

It’s fine. Ten can handle it. He always does. 

(A little voice in his head, one that sounds a little bit like Johnny, reminds him that this isn’t the sort of thing anyone can handle alone. He tells it very pointedly to shut up.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How many times do I have to type Johhny instead of Johnny before I'm banished to an alternate universe ~~where he has lines~~
> 
> Disclaimer: characterization will be a little different because I’m trying to base it off of WayV’s characters in Take Off as much as possible, but I'm doing my best to keep everything accurate :)
> 
> Please let me know if you enjoyed!


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meet-cute (minus the meet and most of the cute)

It’s easy not to miss something when it’s too far away to think about. Out of sight, out of mind, after all. Ten’s operated on that principle since he was fourteen and stepping off a plane to Korea, already missing Thailand like a lost limb. 

It works well enough- unless you count the times when no amount of blankets can warm away the ice in Ten’s bones, when tears snake down his cheeks at three in the morning and reflect the silver glow of the moon like something out of the overdramatic, poignant kind of poetry Johnny used to love. 

But no one sees those nights except Ten, so they effectively don’t count. He’s functioning. He’s _better_ than functioning- he’s thriving. 

So what if Johnny isn’t nearly as far away as he used to be? So what if Ten hasn’t slept a full night since the job at the mansion? So what if he sees traces of Johnny everywhere, in everything from the scent of Kun’s morning coffee to the way Dejun takes artsy pictures on his phone for future design reference? 

Even the thunderstorm raging outside of the office building he’s in now reminds him of Johnny, as stupid as that sounds. Johnny had always loved watching them, pressing himself up against the nearest window to stare at bolts of lightning like a child looking for Santa on Christmas Eve. Sometimes he’d take long-exposure pictures of the storm and practically coo in delight when they’d turn out, showing them to Ten with a smile that somehow managed to shine brighter than the lightning he’d captured. 

...God, he’s such a sap. This is the opposite of how a professional is supposed to act. 

Ten doesn’t even _like_ thunderstorms- they’re a tremendous hassle on missions, for one. The power going out can fuck up any number of things for him, and harsh rain, while not really an inconvenience, is annoying as hell to run through. It’s also terrifying, though he’ll never admit it, to be in a state of perfect focus and get startled by a crack of thunder. 

(He’d always liked watching Johnny watch them, though.) 

But Ten’s not here to be sentimental, no matter how good of a job he’s doing at exactly that. There’s a file that needs to be stolen, a draft contract between BlackBox and whatever manufacturing company this is, and Ten had immediately volunteered. If SM is going to send someone after them again, he’s going to take the fall for it.

At least there aren’t any air vents this time. 

So far, it’s been another simple mission -office heists always tend to be- but Ten is honestly thankful for it. He’s not in the mood to handle a shootout or a rival agent tonight. The file room is easy to break into, the electronic lock easily tricked by the false key Sicheng made for him, and from there it’s a simple enough alphabetical search. 

Or it should be, anyway, but the file isn’t there. 

“It definitely should be there,” Kun assures him over the comm. “This is where they keep all of their contract records.” 

Tenn huffs and shuts the file cabinet. “Well, unless it’s not ‘Project Delta,’ it isn’t here.” He pauses, dread creeping in soft and slow. “Did someone beat us to it?” 

The drive was an acceptable loss- Sicheng just stole the same information digitally. The only reason they needed the physical copy at all was to prevent anyone else from getting it. Paper files, though, are irreplaceable. This is a piece of the puzzle they can’t afford to lose. 

“I don’t think so, unless it’s been gone for a while,” Kun replies, and Ten can practically hear the gears in his brain turning over the comm. “But it can’t have been, because it was just looked at today by both parties involved. So maybe it’s-”

“Still in the conference room, got it,” Ten finishes, and he follows Kun’s smooth directions until he’s jimmying open the lock on a fancy-looking wooden door. 

“There’s cameras in there,” Kun warns. “Sicheng only looped the ones in the common areas, so stay discreet.”

“I’m always discreet,” Ten hums as he slips a dark facemask -one exactly for this purpose- on, pushing it up until it almost covers his eyes. Edging the door open, Ten creeps inside and peers at the conference room table, careful to keep close to the corner of the room. 

“There’s a folder on the table,” he whispers. “I can’t read what it is from here, though.” 

“Grab it and check,” Kun replies. His voice is equally hushed despite it not having to be, a cute little trait of his. He always gets very much into his handling jobs. “If it isn’t what we’re looking for you can just put it back in the file room.”

Ten obliges and grabs it, skimming the label on the front of the file. “It’s the right one,” he softly announces.

“Good job, now get out,” Kun says. 

And Ten does, all the while fighting that creeping feeling of _this is too easy_ again. There hadn’t been a missed camera, a late-night employee, even a security guard doing his rounds for Ten to contend with. No mission ever goes according to plan- except this one has. 

The job at the mansion had been like this too, until- 

Ten shakes his head to chase the thoughts away and lets it thunk lightly against the metal of the elevator he’s in. Thirty floors is a long ride on its own, and worrying over hypotheticals only makes it feel longer. He busies himself by making faces and doing the worst aegyo he can come up with at the camera in one corner despite knowing it’s just on loop. 

He’s at the fourteenth floor when, funnily enough, the elevator shudders to a standstill. 

Ten glances around warily like an explanation for the stop will magically appear on the walls somewhere. His first thought is that the power got knocked out, but the elevator is still very much lit with that ugly yellow glow bureaucracy favors so much. 

“Kun?” he asks warily, gaze now trained on the closed door in front of him. “What happened?” 

No response. 

Which is bad, because Ten _always_ gets a response. It’s not like Kun decided to step away for coffee. And there’s no reason an empty office building would have anything in it that could possibly shut down their comm line. Ten pulls a knife from his boot and readies it, flipping it over and over in his hand unconsciously. 

There’s a loud, _loud_ burst of feedback in his ear, so harsh and sudden he can’t help but wince. “Kun?” he hisses. Icy adrenaline slithers its way into his bones, leaving him hyperaware and ready for a fight. Absently, the thought occurs to him that their comm lines don’t make static noises like that, on or offline. 

Something about all of this is _wrong wrong wrong_ , but Ten can’t figure out what-

The elevator gives a pleasant _ding_ and the doors whoosh open. 

Ten presses up against the front wall of the elevator and listens, straining to pick out anything out of the ordinary. The doors don’t seem to be intent on closing anytime soon, and all he can hear is the buzz of the fluorescent lights above his head. No one’s around to have called the elevator, unless the building has a ghost Ten hadn’t heard about.

This whole thing is off, some strange nightmare he can’t quite wake up from. His comm is still crackling with static that ebbs and flows randomly like a dying radio. Ten readjusts his grip on his knife and tries to ignore the prickling sensation of fear in his gut- something anxiety-inducing all its own, as he prides himself on being fearless. 

Finally, finally, there’s a noise from somewhere outside of the elevator. Light footsteps move across wood flooring, rapidly approaching Ten. Whoever it is is talking to someone in hushed tones, and if he listens hard enough he can just barely pick the language out as English-

_Goddammit, again?_

Against what’s probably all better judgment Ten slips his knife back into his boot and flattens himself against the wall, cheek pressed against the cool metal of the elevator and eyes straining to catch any kind of movement in his peripherals. He doesn’t have to wait long. 

“I told you, it doesn’t matter-” Johnny snaps in English, doing an unusually poor job of keeping his voice quiet. He’s cut off by whoever’s on the other end of his comm, the person who’s handling for 127 now -Mark, maybe?- and rushes into elevator sufficiently distracted. 

Ten waits until Johnny is adequately out of sight from every possible camera outside before he strikes. He slips behind Johnny and with one fluid motion kicks his legs out from under him and wraps one hand over his mouth. His other hand smoothly plucks the comm out of Johnny’s ear and disconnects it, far too familiar with how to work SM tech.

As if equipped with a sense of dramatic timing, the elevator doors slide smoothly closed. Perfect. 

“Give me one reason not to cut your throat here and now,” Ten says lowly, impressed with how steady his voice is. Maybe he’s too on edge to have Feelings at the moment.  
There’s a pause, then Johnny mutters something through Ten’s hand. He tilts his head slightly to look at Ten through the corner of his eye, and Ten can _feel_ his smile.

Ugh. He removes his hand and shakes it like he’s been touching something gross (he wasn’t though, not by any means- Johnny has really nice skin) and makes the likely stupid decision to step away from him. 

He leans against one wall of the elevator as Johnny gets to his feet and looks Ten up and down with that terribly fond expression of his that makes Ten want to scream and kiss him all at once. Johnny mirrors his position against the opposite wall, careful to keep his hands in full view, and Ten gets the message easily. As much as Johnny might be his Achilles heel, the reverse is every bit as true. Neither of them are capable of hurting each other with anything worse than words. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” Johnny begins with a grin. “What are the odds?” He’s much more emotionally put-together this time- both of them are. Ten’s at least had a minute or so to mentally prepare himself, and Johnny’s always been adaptable. No feelings will escape tonight without the express permission of their owners.

While the open wound of their last meeting two years ago is still very much there and aching, it’s not as raw as it was the night of the gala job. He’s mentally run over every second of their interaction at the mansion so many times that the memory is crystal clear in his head, and the only pain he still feels from it is longing for Johnny to come back. 

Ten’s tired of being bitter and heartbroken and anguished all the time. He just wants his lover back. And even if that’s impossible, even if after tonight they’ll never see each other again, Ten lets himself take quiet comfort in Johnny’s presence in the elevator. He’s going to enjoy what he has while he has it. 

“A million to one,” Ten answers, tries to school his expression to something haughty and flippant. Being weak for Johnny doesn't change anything. He still has the upper hand here- he just has to remember that. “Which begs the question- what are _you_ doing here?” 

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Johnny replies with an easy grin, like they’re friends who accidentally ran into each other at a coffee shop instead of trained spies who are supposed to be the bitterest of enemies. 

“Your humor’s bad enough already- that might end me before you get the chance to,” Ten snarks back, doing his best to hide the grin he can feel pulling at the edge of his lips. It’s so easy to fall back into their routine of easy banter and flirtatious smiles that Ten barely realizes he’s doing it. It’s so easy to pretend, here in this elevator where time has no meaning, that the past two years haven’t happened, that they’re just chatting during a lull on one of their joint missions.

It feels a little bit like coming home. 

Unbidden, the thought occurs to Ten that maybe Johnny’s been missing him too, that he’d been hoping for something like this to happen. He very pointedly shoves the concept away and refuses to entertain it. 

Johnny fakes a distraught expression, pouting at Ten theatrically. “If you died, though, what would I have left to live for?” 

Mortifyingly, Ten’s first instinct is to swoon. Damn Johnny and his ability to turn even the worst lines into something smooth. “Wow, does it smell like cheese in here?” Ten makes a show of glancing around the elevator in overdramatic curiosity before leveling him with a deadpan stare. “No, I think it’s just you.” 

“You love me anyways,” Johnny replies with one those unfairly gorgeous smirks of his. 

Ten opens his mouth to dispute the statement and finds he can’t. 

“So, why are you here?” he asks again, because questions like that are safe territory. He can’t help but sneak glances at Johnny whenever his eyes leave Ten’s face, just watching him and trying to make up for lost time. He’s beautiful and dangerous in his all-black outfit tonight; leaning against the elevator, he looks like he belongs on the front cover of a magazine. It’s unfair. 

“Looking for something,” Johnny answers, which is a more honest response than Ten had expected. “Didn’t find it, though.” 

That’s not surprising. Ten has no idea what floor fourteen specializes in, but he seriously doubts there’s anything too important hidden among the sea of cubicles there. “Maybe your intel was bad, then,” he says dryly. 

“Maybe,” Johnny hums, and something’s off about the way he says it, but Ten chalks it up to him not wanting to give too much away. “If I ask you the same question, will I get an answer?”

“Nope,” Ten replies cheerily. He might be breaking every spy rule in the book just by standing in this elevator, but he’s not stupid enough to bring up BlackBox. Information and secrets have a way of getting out even when they’re not meant to, and even if Ten trusts Johnny implicitly that doesn’t mean SM won’t be interrogating him for information the second he’s back at NCT headquarters. 

Out of nowhere, Ten’s comm gives another one of those sharp bursts of feedback and he starts, accidentally smacking his head directly into the metal wall of the elevator. The combination of physical and auditory pain is unpleasant, to say the least, but it’s nothing compared to the embarrassment Ten feels when he glances up at Johnny and finds him staring in wide-eyed concern. 

“Ten, are you okay?” he asks, and it must be the ringing in his ears, but Johnny’s voice sounds a little off, like it’s been doubled and pitch-bent. 

“Ten?” he hears again, and this time it’s not Johnny’s voice in his ears but Kun’s. 

_Shit._

Ten presses a finger to his lips and shoots Johnny the most intimidating glare he can, trying his best to threaten him with death if he says a word through angry eye contact alone. Johnny’s brows furrow and he opens his mouth, ready to ask what’s going on, but Ten beats him to it.

“Kun?” he says into his comm. “Kun, are you there?”

Johnny _ohs_ silently and promptly shuts his mouth. Ten rolls his eyes and turns away from him, a pointless attempt at gaining some kind of privacy inside the tiny elevator. 

“Yeah, I’m here,” Kun replies, frustration and worry seeping into his tone in equal measure. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, everything’s fine here,” Ten reassures him, and Kun sighs in relief. 

“Good. Something in there jammed my signal, and Sicheng just now figured out how to get by it,” he explains, and Ten turns and shoots another glare at Johnny as he mentally puts the pieces together. Johnny, despite having no idea what’s going on, grins sheepishly and puts both hands up in surrender. 

Ten’s honestly going to shoot him if he doesn’t stop being so damn charming all the damn time. It’s distracting. 

“The elevator stopped at one point, but I’m almost out of the building now,” Ten tells Kun. As he speaks, he reaches over and presses the lobby button on the elevator panel. 

“The file’s still fine, right?” Kun asks.

“Yes,” Ten replies, keeping his expression nonchalant and gaze away from Johnny. They’re still on opposite sides of what’s essentially a war, after all, and Johnny can’t know he’s in possession of the file. 

Kun of course picks up on his change of phrasing, observant as he is, but he fortunately misinterprets it as Ten being a more competent agent than he really is. “Staying nonspecific is smart,” he compliments, “whatever messed with the comms might have ears in the elevator. We wouldn’t want anyone to know you’re here and that you have the file.” 

It takes every bit of Ten’s self-control not to burst out in hysterical laughter right then and there. If only Kun knew. 

“Right,” he replies, for lack of anything more constructive to say. Across from him, Johnny reaches down and picks his disconnected comm up off the ground and slips it back into his ear. Ten watches him nervously for a moment, but he doesn’t reconnect it, instead leaning back against the wall of the elevator and raising his eyebrows playfully at Ten. 

“Extraction is two streets south, the black sedan on the right side of the street,” Kun informs him. “Lucas is driving.”

Driving anywhere with Lucas is an experience, to say the least. It’s better than driving with Yangyang, who treats crowded city streets like open racetrack, but Lucas still tends to think speed limits and stop signs are just suggestions. It’s pretty fun, actually, so long as Ten ignores the looming sensation of impending death he gets every time Lucas touches the gas pedal. 

They’re at the third floor now, and it’s impossible to ignore the dawning realization that Ten’s going to have to leave Johnny behind soon. This might be the last time they see each other for weeks, months, even years (or ever again) because of the lives they lead. Logically, it’s for the best -Ten should be relieved, really, that there’s no way something like this will happen again- but the thought stings anyway. 

Ten sneaks another look at him, tries to commit his face to memory again. Johnny hasn’t changed much even in two years, but there’s something to the set to his shoulders that speaks to intense grief. Ten knows he probably holds himself the same way now when he’s not faking a nonchalant slouch. 

They’d been two halves of a whole for such a long time that Ten used to not know where he ended and Johnny began. They’d known each other since Ten was fourteen and Johnny fifteen, and as they’d grown older and wiser and stronger they’d fallen into each other so easily they’d barely noticed they were doing it. Johnny couldn’t use a slang word more than once without Ten unconsciously picking it up within a day; Ten couldn’t crack a single joke without Johnny appearing from nowhere and smoothly following it up with something just as funny. They drifted across rooms to be near each other without meaning to, would attempt to separate only to notice they’d been holding hands for twenty minutes without realizing. 

There’s Johnny and there’s Ten, separate entities, but there’s also a space between them that they’d spent years filling until _Johnny and Ten_ could be just as accurately described as JohnnyandTen. Ten’s still grappling with that space being empty again, still learning how to be something that isn’t, unique and independent as it may be, at the end of the day still inextricably half of a greater whole.

Rainbow V helps- he loves his team, enough to go to war for them, and in return their smiles help fill the smallest bits of that empty space. Having a purpose helps too. But nothing, nothing can ever quite fix what’s broken, what’s missing. Ten isn’t even sure he wants it to be fixed.  
There’s a growing seed, though, in that hole these days, has been ever since the manor, of something that feels a little bit like hope. Ten’s trying to ignore it. 

The elevator reaches the ground floor and dings, the doors opening smoothly to reveal the lobby of the office building, its deep gray walls lit solely by the streetlights outside. Although it goes against every agent instinct in him, Ten turns his back to Johnny and steps out towards the door. No sense in delaying the inevitable- the longer he stays, the harder it’ll be to leave Johnny again. 

Johnny follows him silently save for the lightest click of his shoes on linoleum floors, too quiet for Ten’s comm to pick up, and when Ten’s about to reach the door and pull it open -hopefully the security system’s still down, otherwise that’ll be a whole new problem to handle- Johnny darts in front of him and holds it for him, grinning and gesturing to the outside with a flourish. 

Fuck, he’s cute. Ten rolls his eyes at him and obligingly slips through the door, tries and fails to hide his smile. The rain had stopped sometime while Ten was in the elevator, and now the air smells of the distinct sweetness of city petrichor. In the distance, there’s the faintest rumble of thunder. 

Johnny comes to stand beside him, hands stuffed casually in his pockets, and for a little while they watch the city come back to life after the storm. The space between them is filled with _something_ again, a quiet, crackling energy like coursing electricity. 

God, he’s missed this. 

After a moment there’s a gentle tap on his shoulder, and Ten knows it’s time to say goodbye. 

“ _I love you_ ,” Johnny mouths, offering him the most dramatic flying kiss Ten has ever seen another person do. 

“ _Don’t follow me_ ,” Ten mouths right back, because he’s a grade-A asshole. 

“ _I love you too_ ,” he adds straight after, because while he might be an asshole, he’s also long ago accepted that few things in his life eclipse the force of the love he feels for Johnny Seo. 

The smile Johnny gives him in response is positively radiant, but the look in his eyes is impossibly sad. It warms Ten’s heart all the same -it’s Johnny, just about everything he does makes Ten happy- and offers a smaller but no less joyful smile in reply before turning away and heading south, trusting Johnny not to tail him. 

A few steps later, he turns back around and looks back at Johnny, who’s less than a second away from reconnecting his comm. He glances at Ten questioningly and halts the motion of his hand. 

“ _Stay safe_ ,” Ten mouths, likely looking utterly ridiculous as he over-exaggerates the words to make them lip-readable from such a distance. 

“ _What?_ ” Johnny mouths back, squinting at him in total confusion. 

Ten rolls his eyes and runs an exasperated hand through his hair. “Never mind.”

Johnny seems to connect the dots a few seconds later, at least, because his gaze softens to something fond and honey-sweet and he puts a hand over his heart. “ _Aw, babe_.” 

Ten huffs loudly and spins on his heel to get away from _that_. 

“Are you okay?” Kun asks immediately. Honestly, Ten had kind of forgotten he was there. 

“Ran into a lamppost,” he lies, and starts looking for the sedan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to post this chapter on Friday but I finished early and was so excited about it that it's here a day early ^^"
> 
> I'm trying to update weekly from here on out, we'll see if I can stick to that haha
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, please let me know if you enjoyed!


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~This isn't late, what are you talking about~~

This is getting ridiculous. 

It’s actually not Johnny, this time -for once- but instead that creeping feeling of _not right_ Ten’s been trying to ignore, back in full force and too loud to push aside. He’s used to trusting his instincts, knows they’re the one thing in the agent business that can’t betray him or break down somehow, and at the moment his gut is screaming that _something’s_ off about all of this. It’s the third time in as many weeks the same thing has happened, and Ten’s sick of it. 

His job this evening was initially supposed to be just simple reconnaissance, but Kun had informed him yesterday that plans had changed. Blackbox has been speeding up its weapons production, and a new manufacturing company has joined their efforts. The company's CEO, one Song Kyungsoo, is a more-than-willing participant in all of this and thus needs to be taken out before any contract is completely finalized. 

It’s the riskiest thing Ten’s done in a long time, and he can’t say he’s not kind of excited for it. There’s also a zero percent chance of Johnny being there because the news of the contract is so secret that Sicheng had to pull off a true feat of hacking and snooping expertise to learn about it at all. 

Speaking of said hacker, Sicheng is his handler again for this evening. He tends to take the more dangerous jobs over Kun in case his tech expertise might be needed, and tonight he’ll need to be looping cameras and guiding Ten through the building almost constantly. 

As if cued Sucheng mutters, so soft it’s almost to himself, “That’s- odd.” 

There it is. Ten’s instincts haven’t failed him once since he’d become an agent, and they certainly weren’t off tonight. 

“What’s going on?” he whispers to Sicheng. He can’t decide how bad he wants the issue to be- he’s kind of in the mood to fight, to chase that addictive high of working under crushing pressure and being shot at; but on the other hand jobs like that often tend to be just as messy as they are fun. 

There’s no immediate response from Sicheng, a sign he isn’t quite sure either. “Some kind of commotion on the upper floors," he answers after a moment. "At least one person’s dead.”

That really, really shouldn’t be happening, especially in an office building in one of the wealthiest districts in the city. The only logical explanation is that someone stole the same intel Sicheng did, but that’s an idea so outlandish Ten doesn’t even entertain it. 

“That's really bad,” Sicheng says as if reading Ten's mind, the faint sound of rapid-fire keyboard clicking filtering through the comm. “There’s not supposed to be anything out of the ordinary here tonight but you.”

“Half-baked assassination attempt?” Ten suggests, only half joking. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

“Hopefully not,” Sicheng huffs, “It’d make things a whole lot harder.”

“Security should be distracted at least, right?” The two armed security guards who were supposed to be just below him -he’s currently perched in the rafters in the stupidly high-ceilinged lobby of the building- are conspicuously absent, hence Ten’s initial judgment of things being _off_. The receptionist is so absorbed in some kind of phone call that she probably wouldn’t notice if Ten walked in through the front door with a machine gun and started shooting. He’s safe for now, or as safe as one can be when they’re ten meters in the air and crouching on a metal bar not really meant to support human weight. 

More clicking from Sicheng. “Key word: should be,” he replies. “Stay careful- cameras are down in the hallway where this is all happening, so I have no idea what’s going on.”

Ten’s gone in blind on enough missions that he’s not really concerned. In the old days, back when Rainbow V had been WayV and SM had controlled every breath they took, they’d been much less careful. Entire missions had been organized and executed on intel that was sketchy at best, and they’d always found a way through anything thrown at them. WayV was good like that. _Ten_ was good like that. 

(They’d always gotten through it- until they hadn’t, but that’s not something Ten needs to think about right now.) 

So yeah, intel is nice, Sicheng being the omnipotent angel on his shoulder is nice, but Ten doesn’t need any of that to do his job. Being completely cut off is a different story, but Ten can accomplish just about anything so long as he has a knife in hand and his handler’s voice in his ear. “Whatever’s going on isn’t where Song is, right?”

“No, it’s about,”-Sicheng pauses to check- “five floors below it. Give or take- cameras are spotty for a whole bunch of floors.”

“Good enough,” Ten decides, and starts making his way across the rafters and out of the lobby. The receptionist is still entirely absorbed in her decidedly non-business call, laughter echoing around the high ceilings of the room. He makes his way to a spot just outside of her peripheral vision and drops from the ceiling, rolling once to lessen the impact of the fall on his knees. Standing up and brushing himself off, Ten glances at his reflection in a conveniently-placed mirror and deems himself office presentable. He rolls his shoulders once, stands up straight, and steps through the door and into the office building. 

Next comes the hard part- blending in. 

Ten’s in a suit for this job- it’s six in the evening and the workday is still in full swing, so if he wants to have any chance of staying inconspicuous he can’t wear what he normally would for spy work. Dejun did his best to make the suit flexible enough for Ten’s tastes -it’s apparently bulletproof, too, though he’d prefer not to test that feature- but the fabric is still uncomfortable to do anything acrobatic in and it makes far too much noise for his liking. 

The suit fulfills its main purpose, though- Ten does a decent enough job at looking like he belongs. No one looks twice at him, appreciative once-overs notwithstanding, and he makes it to the elevator without any issues. A girl even cheerfully offers to grab him a cup of coffee, and Ten’s half-tempted to accept her offer just to see what’ll happen. He ends up saying no with an apologetic grin and the look of sheer disappointment on her face is almost funny. 

The elevator Ten slips into isn’t empty, which he would’ve preferred, but the two workers he’s riding with are delightfully gossipy, which is the second-best option. Sicheng, who’s been cheerfully making fun of him after every social interaction he’s had with an office worker, listens intently and provides commentary of his own.

“So they started cleaning floors seventy five through eighty today,” one of them remarks. “But they only started doing it like two hours ago.”

The other worker scoffs. “Why the hell would they start doing it _now?_ They didn’t even give us advance warning- I had a coffee mug up there I lent to Hyerin-ah that I can’t get back until they’re done.”

“That’s because there’s probably mercenaries on those floors,” Sicheng says, like there’s any chance the worker will hear him. “On the upside, I doubt they’ll touch your coffee mug while they’re up there killing people or whatever.” 

Ten snorts despite himself and one of the workers turns to him. “Lemme guess,” he says, “You work up there?” 

It wasn’t the backstory Ten was going to go with- but, considering he didn’t have one in the first place, it's arguably much better. He slips into the role easily and affects a long-suffering sigh and head nod. “They kicked us out of there a few hours ago with no explanation or _anything_. My laptop’s still up there, too, because I was in the bathroom and didn’t have time to grab it.”

The two workers cluck in sympathy, and Ten mentally pats himself on the back. 

“Everything around here’s been weird since those BlackBox people showed up,” the first one laments, and Ten nods along with the other worker. “The guards on the upper floors creep me out. I had to go up there to deliver a paper to Mr. Song’s secretary and I almost cried when one of them looked at me. _They’re scary,_ ” he adds in a stage whisper, as if one of the guards might be listening in at that very moment. 

“Guards are gonna make your job harder,” Sicheng says a bit unnecessarily. “Hopefully they’ll be on the lower floors dealing with whatever’s going on there. It’s weird, though, that they’re putting so much effort into protecting Song. Something must have them worried.”

Ten can’t exactly reply, but he agrees. It feels a little bit like they’ve been tipped off ahead of time about Ten’s arrival, but that doesn’t make sense, because Ten hasn’t breathed a word about this operation to anyone outside of Rainbow V. Again, that ugly little feeling of _wrong_ rears its head. It hasn’t ever truly left since the moment he’d first been briefed on Blackbox- an incredibly shady, powerful weapons company appearing out of nowhere and building up a massive arsenal for reasons unknown would be wildly suspicious to just about anyone. 

But as much as Ten’s instincts may be infallible, they’re not a good enough excuse to stop him from doing his job. He’s going to get in, kill Song and whoever might be guarding him, get out, and then figure out just the what the hell is going on with all of this. 

The elevator stops on the sixty-seventh floor and the two workers get off, still gossiping softly about the guards. They offer cheery waves and a “hope you get your laptop back!” to Ten as they depart. 

The top floor, when Ten reaches it, is empty. Too empty. Ten can’t hear anything but the buzz of fluorescent lights and the gentle ticking of a clock somewhere just out of sight. “Where are the guards?” he asks Sicheng, voice as soft as it’ll go. 

“Wherever the fighting is, maybe?” he replies, sounding equally uncertain. “Are you sure there’s no one up there?”

Ten pauses again to listen, but there’s still nothing but unsettling quiet. Not a shuffle of footsteps, not a rustle of fabric, not a breath. The top floor isn’t that big, and its open plan makes it hard to hide. Unless these guards possess stealth skills beyond anything Ten’s ever seen, they aren't there anymore. Just to be thorough, he slips across the room and peeks into CEO Song’s office, but it’s empty too. “Nothing,” he confirms.

“They might’ve evacuated Song,” Sicheng says. “Fuck, I really hope not.” They’d have to replan their whole mission, plus they’d likely have the extra hurdle of additional security to contend with. The precious time they’d need to spend replanning would mean BlackBox might even be able to finalize their contract with Song, and that can’t happen.

“What if he’s down where the fighting is?” Maybe Song got taken by whoever showed up before Ten, and the security chased them down to the lower floors. It would explain a lot, actually.

“It's possible," Sicheng decides.”We can check."

So Ten ends up back in the elevator, heading for floor seventy-eight, where most of the fighting had apparently gone down earlier. He’s been spending a lot of time in elevators lately, and he’s kind of getting sick of them. Too claustrophobic for his taste. Next mission he wants to do something fun- a few months ago he’d infiltrated the underground racetrack of a gang with Yangyang and had the time of his life. Something like that would be nice. 

He voices this thought to Sicheng and gets nothing but a derisive laugh in response. Ten pouts for the rest of the ride.

“You need to be really careful here,” Sicheng tells him when the elevator stops and he starts to step out. “I have no idea who’s here or how well armed they are. Stay out of sight if yo-”

His voice cuts out smoothly- one second it’s there, and the next there’s nothing filtering through Ten’s comm but disconcerting silence. 

“Sicheng?” Ten darts back into the elevator and, sure enough, his comm comes back to life.

“-en? Ten? Dammit, not again-”

“I’m here, I’m here,” he says quickly.

“Thank god,” Sicheng breathes. “What happened this time?”

There’s interference on this floor,” Ten reports. “My comm only works in the elevator.”

"God, what's the point of me being your handler if I can't even talk to you half the time?" Sicheng lets out an irritated sigh. “You’re gonna be on your own _again_ ,” he says, frustration clear in his voice. “If things go south, just get the fuck out however you need to. This isn’t a job worth your life.”

“Okay,” Ten replies, immediately disregarding his advice. Song needs to die, and Ten has yet to be killed on a job, so technically his track record is perfect and his statistical odds of dying are incredibly low. He’ll get the job done no matter what it takes. 

The first three guards are easy kills- they’re facing elsewhere, dispatched easily as Ten muffles their cries with a hand and drags them around corners to finish them off. The seventy-eighth floor is filled with cubicles and abandoned offices, a victim of the “cleaning” efforts started a few hours back. 

From there the rest of the floor is empty, but when Ten approaches the area near the entrance to the stairwell to look for more guards, he’s assaulted with the nauseating scent of what can only be described as _death_. The smell is emanating from a conference room, its door shut to hide whatever undoubtedly horrific sight is inside. Ten leaves it as such and carefully avoids that side of the floor for the rest of his search. 

Once he’s confirmed the rest of the floor is empty of guards, he approaches the two corner offices on the floor, their doors side-by-side. One is guarded by two men clutching machine guns; the other is empty of security. Ten’s not sure if they're unprofessional or just plain stupid, but they somehow haven’t noticed they’re the only two mercenaries left. 

Ten embeds a throwing knife in one guard’s head and, when the other shouts and glances around in a panic, he cleanly slits his throat from behind. Amateurs. 

He peeks into the unguarded office as a precaution, gives it a quick once-over that yields nothing of interest until he catches sight of the body of Song Kyungsoo on the floor with a hole in his head. 

That’s- not what he’d expected, to say the least. 

By now it’s obvious that someone’s beaten him here, which is troubling. No one should have known about Song, and only a mercenary or a spy could cause this kind of chaos and still get their job done. Ten’s got competition, it seems. Competition he might need to be fighting if he needs to make it out of the building alive.

The discovery of Song’s body also begs the question of just what those two mercenaries were guarding. With Song dead, they’d failed their goal- there’s no reason for them to even be in the building anymore outside of cleanup. 

_Unless…_

Ten backs out of the office and cracks open the door of its neighbor, stopping when there’s just enough of an opening for him to take in what’s inside. When he processes the scene before him, he hisses out a a curse and almost slams the door shut in sheer disbelief. 

Of course. 

Somewhere, Fate is laughing at Ten and his apparently foolish, naive belief that the same unbelievable coincidence couldn’t happen three times in a row. 

This shouldn’t be happening- but it is, so now Ten has to handle it. He sighs, steels himself, and shoves the door open all the way, stepping into the second office. It’s stripped bare except for a lonely gray desk chair and Johnny, who’s duct-taped into said chair. He’s remarkably uninjured, considering he’s just committed an assassination and is currently being held captive for it. 

He meets Ten’s eyes and smiles, taking him in like he’s the only thing worth looking at in the world. It’s cute, but Ten’s too concerned about the greater implications of his presence to really care. 

If Ten were a responsible agent, the ace of SM like he’d once been, he’d leave Johnny tied up and get out of the building as quickly as he can. Even if he personally didn’t kill Song, he’s still dead, and that’s what’s important in the long-term. Then he’d report everything back to Kun and the rest of Rainbow V, leaving nothing out in order to help keep his team safe from whatever SM is planning. 

(It’s a shame Ten’s nothing like the agent he used to be.)

A few quick slashes of a knife later and Johnny is free from the confines of the tape, rubbing his wrists and staring at Ten with something unreadable swirling in his eyes. He mouths something and gestures to his ear with one hand while he stretches his free arm. 

“There’s interference on this floor, so no comms,” Ten answers his unasked question. 

Understanding shines in Johnny’s eyes. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Ten says, stepping away from him and letting himself fall back against the office’s door with a _thunk,_ effectively blocking either of them from leaving. There’s a beat of silence where Johnny watches him warily, obviously having picked up on his less-than-sociable disposition. 

“Johnny, what the fuck are you doing here?” he finally asks, voice sharp. This- game, stroke of serendipity, whatever the hell it is, was fine at first (amazing, if he’s being honest) but no one outside of Rainbow V could’ve known about Song. That means one of two things- either Ten’s been bugged without noticing, or there’s a rat in their midst. Both of those possibilities are unthinkable, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.

“An assassination?” Johnny replies. He looks a little lost, standing there in the center of the empty office like he can’t decide whether to try and get closer to Ten or back away. 

“Yeah, I got that,” Ten replies dryly. “Why here, though? No one else was supposed to know about this.” He looks Johnny up and down intensely, searching for anything suspicious in his body language that Ten can poke at. 

“I don’t know,” Johnny replies, and he really does seem confused. “I don’t get 127’s intel- Mark just briefed me on the job and I went.”

That’s exactly what Ten was afraid of. SM and transparency are the bitterest of enemies; their intel comes from a vast and nebulous network of sources, most of whom need total anonymity to do their jobs. Ten had never known where WayV’s intel came from back when he’d worked for SM, either. 

Chances are Johnny won’t provide him anything useful information-wise. He should leave now and save Sicheng the stress of him being gone for too long. Still, though, Ten can’t find it in himself to move away from the door.

“You’re not hurt, right?” he asks. 

Johnny shakes his head. “They hadn’t gotten around to interrogating me yet.”

“That’s good.”

There’s a beat of silence. There’s an awkwardness to the air this time; this is uncertain territory for both of them. Ten genuinely had never expected to see Johnny again, not for a long time, and he’s not sure what to say or what the protocol for this is. 

“Thanks for saving me-”

“I need to go-”

They both stop and look at each other. In some deep recess of Ten’s heart, he aches for the rhythm they’d once had, where there were no awkward silences, no mistrust. Without the euphoria of reunion smoothing things over, that space between them is empty again, a chasm with no bridge over it. 

Ten wants it back so badly it hurts. He keeps trying to make peace with his circumstances, but every time Johnny bursts back in with those easy smiles and perfect coincidences and Ten loses every bit of progress he’d made. They can’t be together- it’s not Ten being melodramatic, it's the fact that they're on opposite sides of what's essentially a war, one with no end in sight. 

Ten can’t keep doing this. If he does, he might end up doing something stupider than everything he’s already done. 

“I need to leave,” he repeats, more firmly this time. “Winwin’s waiting for me.” 

Johnny’s eyes quietly light up at the mention of Sicheng, and he looks like he wants to ask about him, but something makes him stop and think better of it. Instead, he steps closer to Ten and extends his hand.

Ten wraps his hand around Johnny’s and interlaces their fingers together out of pure habit, the act coming as naturally as breathing. His default state around Johnny used to be some form of physical contact between them. It’s a comfort he hasn’t felt in far too long. 

Johnny, though, awkwardly disentangles his hand from Ten, looking apologetic and vaguely devastated, and instead deposits a slip of paper in his now-open hand. 

“Stay safe,” Johnny tells him. “I’ll see you soon.” It sounds like a promise, like Johnny would fight Fate personally if he had to for their meetups to keep happening. Honestly, Ten wouldn’t put it past him to if the opportunity were offered. 

“You too,” Ten replies, because it feels like the only right thing to say, and slips out the door. 

In a moment of quiet in the hallway, before Ten steps into the elevator and makes up a story about an assassination he didn't commit, he stops. Carefully, he unfolds the paper Johnny gave him and skims the short line of text on it- an address and a date. Ten’s first thought is that he’s being invited for some kind of covert meetup, but then he takes in the hearts doodled all around the messily written note and decides it’s definitely not spy business. 

He doesn’t have to go- honestly, he shouldn’t even consider it. He’s got any number of logical reasons to decline: it’s dangerous, Rainbow V might ask questions, and to say nothing of the fact that Ten would be _actively fraternizing with the enemy._

So when Ten gets home that night, he grabs a lighter from his bedside table, one originally stolen from Lucas, and burns the note until it’s nothing but a small pile of ash. Then he opens his closet door and starts rifling through it, looking for an outfit appropriate to wear for his meetup with Johnny. 

God, the things he does for love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little less spying and a bit of history next update, and hopefully it'll be sooner this time!
> 
> (I'm fairly sure there's no famous person out there called Song Kyungsoo, but if there is, I promise this Song is fictional and not supposed to bear resemblance to anyone!)
> 
> As always, thanks for reading and please let me know if you enjoyed!


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JohnTen, a (summarized) history

There’s a reason spies aren’t supposed to form romantic attachments. While bodies can be protected with armor, lives kept safe with guns and blades, nothing can safeguard the metaphorical heart once it’s been given away. Although there are dozens of de facto rules in the secret agent business, that one is by far the most important.

Of course, it’s the one Ten broke almost immediately. Go big or go home, right?

When Ten was fourteen and he’d first come to Korea, he’d acted angry just about all the time. He was terrified and lost in a country where he didn’t speak the language and sort-of-unintentionally leashed to a company so terrifying people didn’t even say its name if it could be helped. Anger -however fake it might have been- kept him going, kept him alive, and it most importantly kept the other, much scarier SM trainees away from him. 

He’d rapidly gained a reputation around SM headquarters as the deadliest new blood yet, capable of taking down people who’d been in the agent business longer than he’d been alive. His supposed unsociability and unwillingness to talk only added to his terrifying persona- rumor had it that even the most mundane interaction with Ten was a sign he was out to get you and that you should sleep with one eye open for a while.

Of course, none of that was really true -well, the combat thing was, though that was just the result of Ten’s nearly suicidal training regimen- but the rumors resulted in no one wanting to get close enough to Ten to realize the reason he didn’t talk was because he simply didn’t know Korean, or that behind all the false anger and posturing he was just a scared teenager. It was lonely, but Ten told himself he didn’t care. He wasn’t here to make friends- he was here to do his best, become an agent, and stay alive until he could retire. 

Things stayed that way for the first two months of Ten’s contract with SM, until a small band of more experienced trainees came back from a long-term mission in Manilla. Ten had learned just enough Korean by then to understand what was happening, but even if he hadn’t been able to understand the rest of the trainees’ excited chatter, the anticipation in the air was palpable. These trainees were important, apparently- the best of the best and generally adored, the closest thing teenage spies could get to being celebrities. 

SM headquarters has a communal cafeteria for its trainees, one not unlike that of a high school, that’s dotted with plastic tables seating about six people each. Although eating outside of the cafeteria is an option, no one does it- the lunchroom is another opportunity for the all-important posturing every trainee does constantly. Ten had sat alone in that cafeteria every day for the last two months, glaring at anyone who walked too close and eating with his head held high and haughty like royalty. 

The moment the trainees first walked in was straight out of a movie- the doors had flown open dramatically and three people stood in the threshold of the cafeteria, taking in the instant hush that fell over its occupants. Behind them was a literal crowd of other trainees, watching the trio with unabashed adoration. 

Ten found it pathetic, honestly. Maybe if those people had spent less time gawking and more time training they’d be better at fighting, confident enough in their own skills that they’d have no need to fawn over their superiors. 

He’d made a noise of distaste and turned back to his food, determined to eat quickly and escape the commotion. If all went well, hopefully he’d never see these new trainees again except maybe as vaguely recognized faces in the halls. 

Of course, luck wasn’t on Ten’s side, and the trio had ended up sitting at the table right next to him, lunch trays piled high with a ridiculous amount of food. They chattered to each other in too-loud voices without a care for anyone else nearby, and Ten did his best to tune them out.

While by no means his proudest moment of observational prowess, he did at some point notice they were talking in English. Ten _understood_ English. They were having the first conversation Ten could properly follow in two full months. He kind of wanted to cry, or maybe kiss them. The one in the middle, the tall one who was the loudest of the three, looked pretty damn good- it certainly wouldn’t be a chore. 

Of course, that conversation was debating the merits of different flavors of sparkling water-not exactly the pinnacle of intellectual conversation- but Ten paid rapt attention nonetheless, glancing over at them as often as he could without arousing any suspicion. He’d stayed in the cafeteria for as long as they had, reveling in the simple joy of being able to understand _something_ for once. 

The next day they’d burst into the training room while Ten was busy absolutely destroying a trainee three years older than him who’d called him a twink over breakfast. His focus didn’t lapse even when they found their way to the sidelines of the practice mat he was fighting on and watched him with visible interest, too furious and too spiteful to think about anything other than wiping the floor with the bastard sneering at him across the mat. 

They were talking in Korean that day, unfortunately, but Ten still managed to catch what sounded a lot like a whispered compliment about his form as he cleanly sweep-kicked his opponent’s legs out from under him and kicked him onto his side with more force than was strictly necessary. “ _Yield,_ ” he’d hissed -one of the first Korean words he’d learned, along with _hi_ and _thank you_ and _what time is it?_ \- and, groaning out curse words under his breath, the guy did just that. 

Ten turned away, hoping the guy would learn his lesson, and immediately came face to face with the trio. One of the boys, blonde and doe-eyed and looking far too soft for the world he was in, said something to him he didn’t fully understand, but judging by his bright grin and copious use of the word “cool,” Ten figured it was safe to offer a small smile back and say thank you. 

Another one, voice a musical baritone, added something else, but Ten really didn’t feel like holding a long conversation with them when he couldn’t understand eighty percent of what was being said. Instead he bowed slightly, said thanks again, and darted out of the training room as quickly as he could. 

Somehow undeterred, they’d sat with him at lunch.

They'd talked in Korean for a few minutes, trying hard to engage Ten in conversation, but the most he could offer was confused smiles and the occasional one-word response. After a few failed attempts, though, the blonde one whispered something to the other two, and they’d made sounds of understanding and turned to Ten with a renewed sense of purpose in their eyes. 

“Hey, do you speak English?” the tall one had asked, switching languages easily, and Ten couldn’t help it.

“I’m Ten, and yes I do,” he replied, and their answering grins were brighter than the fluorescent lights of the cafeteria. 

All three of them had spent varying lengths of time in North America, Ten learned, before they’d become spies. There was Mark, who was blonde and delicate-looking, laughed at jokes that weren’t funny, and was a tech genius so smart he was like something out of a movie. There was Jaehyun, who had the kind of voice that belonged on late-night radio and who was already one of the best snipers SM had despite his young age, who could land shots Ten couldn’t manage on a good day blindfolded. 

And then there was Johnny, who was one of the funniest, most charming people Ten had ever met without even trying to be. He gave off an aura of smooth confidence without seeming pretentious, could be a stone-cold professional just as easily as he could be silly, and he could charm a brick wall into moving for him with a smile and a wink. 

He was going to become kind of special agent, Ten learned from Jaehyun, for a unit that didn’t even exist yet. All three of them were, but Johnny had been the first one scouted, yanked out of a potential assignment with an existing unit for the opportunity. It was a huge deal, apparently- this new unit was supposed to be made up of only the best of the best and structured much more globally than anything else SM had ever tried. 

Ten couldn’t find it in himself to be surprised by the news- the three of them were some of the most competent people he’d ever met. What did surprise him was when he was told not a month later he’d be joining their unit. NCT, it was called, keeping in line with the odd and poetic names SM liked to give their spy teams, and it was a temporary grouping for what would later become a much larger team. 

Ten wasn’t sure why he’d been chosen, but he certainly wasn’t going to complain. Being contracted would give him the stability he hadn’t had since coming to Korea, the comforting knowledge that he wasn’t going to be dropped at any time like lesser-performing trainees so often were. 

There was a whole collection of trainees being considered for NCT, due to the massive scale of the project, but only six of them were “officially” considered members- Ten, Jaehyun, Mark, two people Ten had never met before named Taeyong and Doyoung, and Johnny. They were vaguely introduced and then unceremoniously shoved into group dorms with little more than a slap on the back and a “don’t kill each other.” 

Ten didn’t think the peace would last more than five minutes. 

He was wrong, actually- they’d lasted a whole _fifteen_ minutes before the first fight had broken out over who was going to room with who. Ten couldn’t even participate in the heated argument, the Korean flying too fast for him to understand much more than a whole not of no and a few curse words sprinkled throughout everyone’s sentences. 

This was already a train wreck. Whoever thought that shoving a bunch of volatile teenage spies in a small space together was a good idea should be fired and possibly shot. NCT was quite possibly the worst idea Ten had ever heard in his life. 

(On the upside, all six of them got a lot better at combat- since someone was always fighting with someone, and the easiest way to settle such debates was on a practice mat, there was never a shortage of sparring partners for anyone.)

They couldn’t make it through a day without some form of argument breaking out, and every time it happened Ten wondered how on earth they’d ever make it to their first mission, let alone actually become a functioning spy unit. 

At the very least, Ten got to spend a lot more time with Johnny. He’d already been one of the few people Ten talked to on the regular due to the lack of a language barrier between them, but the regular conflict in their dorms led to a new routine forming between them. Whenever the fighting got too bad, Johnny would come find Ten and catch his eye, and the two of them would subtly sneak out of the dorm. From there they’d leave headquarters altogether and go grab street food, chatting and revelling in the peace of being somewhere that wasn’t a total war zone. 

Sometimes they’d talk about nothing more profound than the weather; other days they’d share their darkest insecurities as they walked under flickering street lights at one in the morning. Ten told him about his fears of NCT never graduating to full unit status, of everyone being forced apart and kicked out of SM. Ten had no backup plan if that happened- he had nowhere to go, no way to get things like a proper visa and a high school diploma. If NCT didn’t work, he was screwed in every way imaginable. 

Johnny’s biggest worry, he admitted one night, voice soft and almost ashamed, was NCT working, the unit being successful, but with him being removed from it. He’d already lost one opportunity with another unit, and losing another probably meant SM would give up on him altogether. 

Although their fears were different, they came from the same place, and when Johnny had finished and looked at Ten, looking so sad and ashamed of what he saw as being selfish, Ten had pulled him into a hug and told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he were ever to leave NCT Ten would go with him. “They can’t lose us both,” he’d said, trying to sound upbeat. “We’re too good for them to just let us go.” 

“They won’t drop you,” Johnny had replied with that same certainty in his voice, and Ten wasn’t sure why he had so much faith in him, but it made his heart flutter nonetheless. “But if anything ever does happen and you want to leave, I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Ten had said immediately. “This is your dream.” Being an agent was Ten’s escape, but Johnny was practically made for the job, loved it with every fiber of his being. 

“I know,” Johnny said, with a soft smile on his face that Ten didn’t understand, one that made him smile back widely and mentally do something akin to a swoon regardless. 

They became close without Ten ever actively realizing what was happening; it was a slow, creeping sense of affection that felt so natural that he never bothered to question it. If anyone asked why they spent practically every waking moment together, Ten would've replied it was because Johnny was one of the few people he could easily talk to and because they just plain liked each other- it was nothing deeper than that. (That excuse quickly lost its validity as Ten’s Korean improved, but no one in NCT questioned it, instead shooting knowing glances at each other as they watched Johnny and Ten become slowly become more and more attached at the hip.)

And, along with Johnny and Ten, at an achingly slow pace NCT started to become closer. Taeyong and Doyoung revealing a hidden passion for cooking helped a lot, as it gave them both something to bond over and a way for everyone else to connect- “team dinnertimes” became routine. Some nights sitting around a table just exacerbated whatever conflict was going on that day, but other times their dinners were full of teasing and laughter.

Within four months everyone in NCT was, at least tentatively, friends. To anyone on the outside, they still seemed to fight just as often -gaining them an unshakable reputation as the most dysfunctional unit SM had- but at some point the arguments had eased up and become easy banter about anything and everything. The fights they had casually over dinner about whose turn it was to clean the bathrooms and who “borrowed” Taeyong’s favorite knife were light, easy, almost joking in nature, nothing like their explosive arguments of the past. 

Their first mission happened a month after that, and it was a complete success. They were in and out in record time, their comms were kept (mostly) clean and professional, and the plan they’d been handed beforehand went off without a hitch. It was one of those mythical “perfect missions,” and when Ten and Johnny had gotten home that night they’d smiled at each other so wide it lit up the whole dorm because they were _making it_. There was no way SM would disband NCT after a performance like that. 

None of their other missions went quite as well as their first one, but it didn’t matter. They were _good_. Really good, in fact, with one of the highest first-year success rates in SM history despite their general newness and youth. 

And then what Ten had with Johnny changed. It was a honeypot mission that made him realize, as cliche as it might have been, because honeypot jobs are known for making and breaking fragile tensions -both romantic and sexual- among agents. Ten had been on standby, sitting in a van with Mark and watching through hacked camera feeds as Johnny flirted with the daughter of some rich heiress like she was the love of his life. 

He wasn’t jealous- Ten understood completely that none of it was real. There was no surge of anger at the girl or Johnny, no sudden possessiveness. Johnny was just doing his job, and he was doing it perfectly. Instead, Ten watched him flirt and, entirely unbidden, the thought popped into his head that he kind of wished he was the one being flirted with instead. 

Now, Ten was by no means stupid, and he realized almost immediately that his feelings for Johnny were something decidedly non-platonic. There was nothing he could do about them, though- hookups and relationships among SM agents were exceedingly common due to the stressful nature of their jobs and the close conditions agents lived under, but Ten knew Johnny didn’t think of him in any context outside of friendship. Not wanting to jeopardize anything, he made the choice to let his feelings sit and ignored them easily, willing them to die so he didn’t have to think about them anymore and things could go back to normal.

But then Johnny, after watching Ten hit on and flirt with a target about two months later, had popped out of the van they were using as his temporary base of operations as Mark squawked for him to _get back inside, you idiot_. 

He’d unceremoniously pinned Ten against the vehicle upon his exit from the building and kissed him so fiercely he’d almost left bruises. Ten had melted against him and kissed right back, Mark had given them a ten-minute lecture about _discretion_ and _basic decency_ when they’d slipped back into the van with mussed hair and swollen lips, and the rest is history. 

Within a month Ten had been kicked out of NCT.

...Well, not exactly, but that’s what it had felt like. He was being put in “reserve,” apparently, to eventually be put in a sect of NCT that didn’t exist yet. It sounded like bullshit, and he’d had to physically restrain Johnny from running off the go fight the nearest SM unit coordinator when he’d found out, but Ten didn’t really have a choice in the matter. If SM wanted him out, he was out. 

And so Ten quietly watched his unit grow without him. NCT renamed itself to NCT 127 as they got older and grew larger, and another sect of NCT was created, calling itself NCT Dream. They were barely teenagers, and they had some of the scariest dispositions Ten had ever seen on anyone. Just _one_ of them (and there were _five_ ), Chenle, was as perpetually hyperactive as a six-year-old on a sugar high, but with a sniper rifle in hand he could hit with ease the kind of shots Jaehyun only landed on his absolute best days. 

(He really liked them, even if he’d never admit it to their faces.) 

Ten wasn’t lonely, at least- he still lived in the NCT dorms, still spent plenty of time with Johnny. Their relationship didn’t suffer, miraculously, likely because Ten tried his absolute best not to be jealous and mostly succeeded, and because Johnny was practically angrier than Ten was about his removal from NCT. 

(They’d had one conversation about Johnny threatening to quit with him, and Ten had shut him down completely. Johnny wasn’t allowed to make that sacrifice for him. Not when they’d come so far and done so much. Johnny instead swore never to let them get separated like this again.)

There were two others benched just like him- Yukhei, who was so upbeat and friendly Ten almost didn’t believe he was an agent until he’d first watched him fight, and Kun, who was generally relaxed and cheerful but posessed unmatched skill for analysis and manipulation. Despite a bit of a language barrier -neither Kun nor Yukhei were fluent in Korean- the three of them became friends quickly, bemoaning their circumstances as best as they could and training together every day. 

Things fell into a status quo for two straight years- Ten hated it, but hate wasn’t going to get him assigned to a sect of NCT. So he waited, instead. He took every rare solo mission he was offered, excelled at them, and managed to take the praise of the higher-ups without laughing in their faces about the hypocrisy of telling someone they were “one of the best agents SM has” while keeping them out of their own unit. 

Then, _finally_ , WayV was announced one night as Ten sat in his dorm with Kun, Yukhei, a furious-looking Sicheng from 127, and three people he’d never seen before. NCT had finally found its purpose as a unit -each sect would be designated to spend most of their time in a certain location, doing work in Korea as needed- and WayV was to be the part designed to be dispatched mainly to China. 

Ten had immediately sent a mental thank you to Kun and Yukhei, who’d been teaching him Chinese on and off out of boredom for months. He knew enough to hold a conversation, at least, and both Yukhei and Kun knew enough Korean that translation wouldn’t be a major hurdle. Already better than his trainee days.

Still, things were rocky at first, to say the absolute least- Dejun didn’t talk to anyone, painfully withdrawn for reasons he refused to share. Yangyang was straight from the illegal racing scene and picked fights with anyone and everyone about just about everything. He found an all-too-easy target in Sicheng, who was already livid and snappish from being unceremoniously yanked away from 127. Guanheng was nice enough but had a frighteningly empty look in his eyes more often than not, disappearing for hours to god-knew-where. Yukhei tried his best to play peacekeeper but frequently got shut down by anyone who found his boundless energy and positivity annoying. Kun tried his best to be a leader despite having never been in that role before, and although he was working hard he had neither the experience nor the natural intimidation factor to corral everyone effectively. 

It felt like the start of NCT all over again, so, ironically, at least Ten knew how to help. He encouraged Yangyang and Sicheng to take out their animosity in sparring instead of with words, and suggested to Kun that they have dinner together every night. He and Sicheng became especially close, too, bonding over their mutual uprootings from the main sect of NCT.

It was a slow process, but it worked in time. Dejun started talking, slowly, and revealed a love for design and art that everyone else in WayV thoroughly encouraged. When Dejun had made Yangyang a custom racing helmet for his birthday he’d almost cried despite being “banned” from racing by SM. (It got plenty of use- he even still wears it now.)

Sicheng calmed down with time, still spent every spare second he could with 127 (Yuta specifically, but no one ever pointed that out) and found a delicate love-hate balance with Yangyang as they grudgingly bonded over their mutual passion for racing (drones and cars, respectively). Kun slowly found his footing as leader, learning to use fear of disappointment as leverage against his team instead of intimidation he wasn’t really good at. Yukhei took everything in stride, voraciously encouraging everyone to be more social. As the conflict stopped, the light came back into Guanheng’s eyes, too, and he got along wonderfully with everyone, somehow knowing just how to make everyone laugh and smile even on their worst days. 

So Ten adjusted to his new team, grew to love them in the same way he did the rest of NCT, and things moved on. He saw Johnny less, now, but it was nothing video calls and texting couldn’t fix. Nothing on heaven and earth could tear them apart, he was sure- distance meant little to them so long as they could see each other after every mission. If anything, Ten actually having a purpose had made him so much happier that their relationship was thriving despite their busy schedules. 

Things were good. Amazing, even- Ten had never been so happy as he was in the year or so after WayV’s creation. He had a unit he loved, a boyfriend he adored beyond description, and life was just treating him _right_ for once. 

Sure, maybe they were being overworked, and sure, maybe SM wasn’t treating them all that well, but who cared? Ten would take too many missions over not enough in a heartbeat. Exhaustion set in quickly, but Ten welcomed it like an old friend, told himself it was just a sign of working hard. 

WayV barely fought, worked like a well-oiled machine, and received so many missions it was like SM was trying to compensate for every opportunity missed over the past two years. It probably wasn’t healthy -all seven of them had perpetual dark circles under their eyes that would put racoons to shame- but no one complained. WayV’s purpose was to excel, and everyone was going to do their best to achieve that, even if it meant being thrown into circumstances so dangerous it was a true miracle no one had died yet.

And then came the mission in Ukraine, and Dejun getting shot, and suddenly everything came to a head and Ten was helping to start a coup. He hadn’t breathed a word of the plan to Johnny even if it just about killed him not to, knowing that giving Johnny plausible deniability in the event of their failure was more important than any short-term betrayal he might feel. 

It had never even occurred to him that if they succeeded Johnny might not want to leave- he’d made a promise, after all. Ten had always assumed Johnny would be right there beside him and the rest of WayV when they left; that was just how things were. They were _JohnnyandTen_ , after all. Two halves of a whole. 

But when Ten had burst into Johnny’s room, the one he shared with Taeyong and which Ten practically knew better than his own, eyes bright and smile euphoric and ready to whisk Johnny away to a better future, Johnny had smiled sadly and said _no_. 

He’d chosen 127 over Ten, in the end. 

“I need to protect them from the fallout of all this,” he’d explained, looking impossibly heartbroken but set in his decision. “They need me more than you do right now.”

Ten had known Johnny loved 127 like family, had known he’d die for them without a second thought if the situation ever called for it -just as Ten would do the same for WayV- but he’d never, ever once considered that love eclipsed what they’d had. He’d been so thrown by it, by the casual breaking of five years of promises, that the arguments he shot back were weak and desperate, the pleas of someone whose fate has already long been set in stone and knows it. All Johnny had done was shake his head and smile as tears brimmed in his eyes. 

And Ten’s so, so good at every kind of fighting imaginable, objectively one of the best, but when fighting fails he’s pretty damn good at fleeing, too. So he ran from what he couldn’t control, he carried out the rest of WayV’s plan, and he left whatever was left of his heart behind in Johnny’s room. Agents don’t need hearts to do their jobs, after all- in fact, they’re generally better off without them. It’s probably no coincidence that Ten’s never been better at his job since he defected. 

He has every right to still be mad about it, to feel the sting of betrayal every time he looks his lover in the eyes, but Ten’s always been so, so weak for Johnny- if he shot Ten in the leg his first thought would be _I’m sure there was a good reason_ instead of righteous anger or distress. The night at the mansion, Johnny had forced Ten’s burnt and broken heart right back into his chest and all of the old pain had returned in full force. He can’t be angry, though, because he loves Johnny far too much to ever hate him. Johnny could break every promise he’d ever made to him, could probably stab Ten in the heart and he wouldn’t be able to muster up much more than a glare. 

“-Ten? You alright?” 

Ten blinks and snaps back into reality. Weird- normally he doesn’t space out for so long. “I’m fine, sorry.”

Dejun smiles at him from across the table in their briefing room. “You’ve seemed out of it lately,” he admits, all kindness and gentle concern. “Is something wrong?” 

“No,” Ten says, the lie tasting oddly bitter on his tongue. He hates lying to Dejun especially, because he’s so genuinely _good_ it just makes him feel even guiltier about what he’s doing. “I’m worried about SM, is all.”

(Sicheng, being the obnoxiously clever hacker that he is, had done some digging after the Song assassination, and he’d figured out that some kind of SM presence had been in the building that night, even if he didn’t know the specifics. “That’s probably why there’s been so much interference on your missions lately,” he’d said, sounding proud of having figured it all out. Ten wasn’t sure if he’d wanted to laugh or cry or panic.)

Dejun’s expression shifts to one of understanding sympathy. “Me too,” he agrees, and there’s a quiet undertone of fear in his next words that make Ten’s heart clench. “What if they’re coming after us again?” 

“They’re not,” Ten says firmly. “I’m sure whatever happened the other night was just a coincidence.” There’s no way SM is trying to bring them back- Johnny would’ve warned him if it was even being considered. 

“And even if they were, we’d kick their asses again,” Yangyang adds as he strides into the room. He’s technically late, but since Ten and Dejun were the only two people actually there on time, he’s actually early. “SM knows not to mess with us anymore.”

They’re planning a mission unrelated to BlackBox, a quick in-and-out assassination in the Phillipines. Ten isn’t even a part of it- they only need three people, and Sicheng decided to give him some time off for all of the hard work he’s been doing lately- but Kun insists they all come to every briefing anyway, just in case. 

They -Sicheng, Kun, and Dejun- are leaving in two days. Ten’s meetup with Johnny is in three. Luck is on his side yet again. 

Ten watches the rest of his team filter in through the door, Kun and Sicheng already discussing some kind of schematics. Yukhei and Guanheng appear a moment later, talking animatedly. Yukhei’s arm is slung over Guanheng’s shoulder in easy familiarity, and their grins are bright in a way that makes Ten’s heart swell to see. 

There’d been a period where their smiles were rare, delicate things to see, to be treasured like the sight of a shooting star. Since the second they’d left SM headquarters for the last time that had stopped being the case- now it was a rare day when Yukhei and Guanheng _weren’t_ smiling or laughing about something every time Ten saw them. 

Ten needs to keep them safe. From SM, from anything that might hurt the people he considers his family. Even from Johnny, if it comes to that. All that matters is that these six people, who love and trust him implicitly, don’t end up hurt or dead or broken because of anything Ten does for himself. In that moment, as Ten watches Kun stand at the head of the room to start the briefing, he makes a decision. 

He knows what he needs to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit slow this week, but rest assured that'll change soon >;)
> 
> (Double update next week!)
> 
> ((Maybe more depending on how productive I am!))


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a grand total of 7 lies told in this short little chapter alone! Some are more obvious than others (and only one _really_ matters)- can you find them all?

Today is the day. 

Which is an ominous way to phrase things, considering Ten’s going on what’s essentially a date, but it has the kind of dramatic flair necessary to convey just how important this meetup is. 

He’d looked up the address ahead of time- a chain coffeeshop in the middle of one of the busiest parts of the city. Not overly romantic, but it’s practical; as long as luck is on their side and no SM agents happen to walk in on them, they’ll be generally safe from prying eyes. 

He tries to ignore the butterflies he feels as he draws closer to his destination. Ten doesn’t _get_ nervous. He’s faced down just about every type of nightmare scenario imaginable, be it a dozen mercenaries with assault rifles or a rapidly-ticking bomb, and he’s never faltered once. A date (maybe a date? Maybe not a date? He’s not sure, honestly) shouldn’t be so nerve-wracking. 

Maybe he’s so nervous because of exactly that- this is so far outside of Ten’s comfort zone it’s a little sad. He’d never gotten to go on dates like this as an agent, and the time he’d spent with Johnny back then was so comfortable that it never had any of the pressures associated with the word. 

Now, with the memory of their awkward last interaction still fresh in his mind, the only thoughts in Ten’s mind are worst-case scenarios. He doesn’t even really know what would constitute as “worst case,” but the nagging concern refuses to go away even as he pulls the door of the coffeeshop open. 

He slips into the shop and scans it as subtly as he can, looking for Johnny. It’s packed around this time of day, very much in the midst of a lunchtime rush, but most people are opting for carry-out instead of sitting at the tables. 

Ten’s search is a quick one- although Johnny looks perfectly nondescript sitting at one of the tables towards the back of the shop, drink in hand and absorbed in his phone, Ten’s spent so much time with him that knowing where he is in a room at any given time is instinct. 

Instead of immediately heading over to sit down, Ten instead gets into the crowded drink line and scans their menu to steady his nerves. He’s not stalling, he’s just- trying to blend in more with the atmosphere of the shop. Definitely. He has to be a good agent even now, after all. 

It takes less than a minute before he feels eyes on him, and Ten pointedly doesn’t glance Johnny’s way. He instead waits for his turn in line, smiling and greeting the barista politely when she gets to him. He orders -a muffin and a black coffee, no sugar- and waits for it in the designated pickup spot like everyone else in the shop.

He does all of this without ever once implying he has any inkling Johnny’s even there. It’s only when he has his food in hand and has taken the first sip of his scalding coffee that he turns towards Johnny’s table. 

He instantly meets Ten’s eyes and offers a wide smile and a little wave, and  _fuck_ is Ten weak for him. He’s watched Johnny commit violent assassinations in front of him with unflinching ease- he shouldn’t be allowed to be so  _cute_. 

Without ever consciously deciding to do so, Ten finds himself smiling and waving right back, most certainly looking like the soft idiot that he is. There goes any attempt at professionalism. 

He slides into the seat across from Johnny, takes a sip from his coffee. There’s a moment of silence.

“Hey,” Johnny says at last, and although the atmosphere is painfully awkward he sounds entirely comfortable. He always was weirdly good at small talk, at making people feel comfortable even in moments where they had no right to be. “How are you?”

“Fantastic,” Ten replies, unwilling to be fully honest until he knows just why he’s here. “You?” 

Johnny takes a sip from his drink. “Better, after this month.” 

The honesty in his statement is unexpected, and it throws Ten for a second. It’s not that Johnny’s feelings are unreciprocated- it’s made Ten’s life a little more worth living, seeing him again after so long, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world- but neither of them are ever supposed to actually _talk_ about the fact that they miss each other dearly. It’s meant to be kept in the subtext between them, in quiet longing looks and unintentionally-intentionally brushing hands when they see each other. 

But Johnny had done it easily, saying he’d missed Ten in the way one would say that grass is green or the sky is blue, so Ten takes a chance and nods. “Yeah, me too.”

Johnny blinks at him almost in surprise, but then a smile lights up his face and Ten’s heart quietly melts. 

“So why did you arrange this?” Ten asks, because he refuses to believe it’s just for  _this_. They don’t get sweet, easy meetups, not anymore. 

“Can’t I just have missed you?” Johnny asks, head tilted and expression soft and genuine.

Ten takes one look at him and scoffs. “You forget I can tell when you’re lying.”

“You’re no fun,” Johnny chastises with a grin, but his lack of protest means Ten knows he’s right. “Maybe I just wanted to take you out again.”

“Our jobs aren’t fun enough for you?” Ten asks sarcastically. “Personally, I find the constant threat of death or capture improves our dates.”

Johnny lets out a startled laugh. “It does make it fun.” He takes a sip from his drink as if to steady himself, and when he speaks again his tone is somber. 

“I’m here to warn you, actually,” he admits, and Ten watches him twists his hands together on top of the table nervously. It’s odd to see him indulge in a nervous tic so freely, especially since Ten knows Johnny’s an incredible actor and can contain such things easily.

“About SM?” Ten guesses, and Johnny’s head snaps up to look him directly in the eyes. “Yeah, Winwin knows they’ve been looking into BlackBox too.”

“They’re trying to find where you live,” Johnny says. “They want to bring you back.”

That doesn’t surprise Ten in the slightest. SM had only barely let them go in the first place, and Kun had warned them from the moment they’d gotten out that SM would never completely give them their freedom. They’d always be looking, waiting for a slip-up or a mission gone wrong to swoop back in and yank one of their best units back into the fold. 

“Who’s been assigned to take us down?” Ten desperately hopes it’s not NCT; Johnny would never willingly go after Rainbow V -neither would anyone else in 127 or Dream, for that matter- and he can’t imagine how that would go over with SM.

“They haven’t put 127 on the mission- too many old ties. Things are too messy,” Johnny answers, picking up on his unasked question, and Ten mentally sighs in relief. “But you need to be careful, play it safe for a while. They’re serious about finding you.” 

Ten nods, makes a mental note to warn everyone in Rainbow V to stay on their guard as soon as they’re all back. “We’ll be careful. Thanks for the warning.”

“Of course.”

They lapse into silence again, but it’s more comfortable this time. Rather than a lack of things to say, there’s almost too much- two years equates to a billion missed stories and experiences they’d need to catch up on to fully bridge the gap between them. Definitely not something that can be achieved in one coffee date. 

Ten doesn’t like the quiet, though. It’s a waste when they’ve spent so much time apart. He picks the first conversation topic that pops into his head and runs with it, determined to get them talking. “So if you were here to warn me about SM, why did you give me a note like that?” 

Not necessarily his best choice of conversation, admittedly, but it’s a neutral topic, an easy way to start them talking about one of the few subjects available that isn’t an emotional minefield.

Johnny gives him a perfectly false-innocent look. “What do you mean? It was totally appropriate for an official spy meetup.”

“So the hearts all around the time and place were-?”

Johnny, ever the flirt, just shoots him a wink. “Just for you, babe.” 

Ten rolls his eyes overdramatically, tries to hide his smile. “You’re _horrible_.” 

“And you love me anyway.”

“Unfortunately,” Ten huffs. 

Johnny smiles and starts to say something else, but out of nowhere his grin abruptly falls away. Ten opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong, but Johnny shushes him and pulls out his phone. It’s ringing, and Johnny shoots him an apologetic look as he picks up. “Hello?”

Ten watches nervously as Johnny listens to whoever’s on the other end of the line talk, tries his best to subtly eavesdrop. He staunchly ignores the curl of disappointment in his chest. Hopefully the call will be a quick one so they can get back to talking. 

“Wait, really?” Johnny looks almost scared as he speaks, and Ten shoots him a concerned glance. He doesn’t see it, instead staring at the opposite wall of the coffeeshop. “Shit, I-”

Another pause as Johnny listens. At one point he even nods to whoever he’s talking to despite the conversation being over the phone. Ten’s starting to get the sinking feeling their time together won’t be nearly as long as he liked. 

“Yeah, I’ll get back as soon as I can,” Johnny says at last, and says a quick goodbye before hanging up. He meets Ten’s eyes apologetically. 

“It’s fine,” Ten tells him before he can start apologizing. “Duty calls, I know.”

“I’m still sorry,” Johnny replies, and before Ten can say anything else he’s leaning across the table and kissing him. 

It’s quick and gentle, but it still makes Ten’s heart stutter and die on the spot, leaves him stunned and breathless. Johnny tastes like coffee and cream and it takes every single bit of Ten’s self-control not to grab him right there and then and never let him go.  

“See you soon?” he asks, when Johnny pulls away. It sounds weak, sappy, desperate, but Ten finds he long ago stopped caring. 

Johnny smiles. “Hopefully.”

And just like that he’s gone, swallowed up in the coffeeshop’s lunchtime crowd. Ten sighs, takes a bite of his untouched muffin. He tries his best to pretend he can’t still taste sweet coffee on his lips from a drink that definitely wasn’t his. 

_Soon_ can’t come quickly enough. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lmao they just keep getting interrupted, don't they- legend says they'll get through at least _one_ proper convo by the time the story's done, though!
> 
> Update again in about twelve hours (I'm literally just gonna sleep and then immediately post the next chapter) so look forward to that! Thanks so much for reading, please let me know if you're enjoying this fic! ^-^


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vicissitude- vi·cis·si·tude, (n.) A change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.

“Ten.” Johnny’s voice is terse and filled with barely-controlled panic. “Ten, they took Hendery.”

It’s two in the morning and the luminescent full moon is bleeding liquid opal on the city below it. Ten’s perched atop the highest skyscraper around, his favorite place to go when he can’t sleep. From above, the moonlight paints his hair silver, and neon lights from the building send streaks of brilliant color dancing across his face. It’s a picturesque scene, tranquil and poetic in its beauty. 

Ten notices none of that through the panic that hits him like a bullet to the stomach. “ _What_ ,” he hisses into the phone. Just how Johnny got his number is a mystery for another time. He hops off the ledge he’s been sitting on and nearly trips in doing so, all semblance of grace and elegance stolen from him along with his teammate. “When?”

“I don’t know, they brought him in a little while ago,” Johnny explains, voice rushed but words practiced, like he’d run through what he was going to say a dozen times before ever picking up the phone. “He’s in holding for now, not interrogation yet, but god knows how long he’ll stay there-”

No one else in Rainbow V will have noticed Guanheng being gone- he hadn’t mentioned going out at all tonight. He’d probably run into the wrong people at the convenience store he likes to frequent when he can’t sleep. 

“Fuck,” Ten mutters, starts pacing along the length of the rooftop. He wants to run off, to go storm SM headquarters right then and there and burn the whole damn building to the ground to get Guanheng back, but that won’t work. He’d get shot the moment he took a step inside. Ten needs a plan. 

He needs the rest of his team. 

“I’m telling everyone else about this,” he decides. He’ll deal with the fallout later; right now his only priority, only thought, is getting Guanheng back. 

“No, no, you can’t,” Johnny replies, quick and desperate. “They’ll find out where your apartment building is if you do this with the rest of V. They’ve already found you.” 

“I’m in my apartment right now,” Ten lies, testing. 

“No, you aren’t,” he replies immediately. “You’re on some rooftop somewhere.”

Fuck. SM really does have eyes on him, then. Johnny’s warning in the coffee shop was accurate. The idea of SM finding out where Rainbow V is living is too horrible to even consider, so any possibility of Ten returning home for a while is out of the question. He can’t risk the security of Rainbow V by telling them now, either- he loves his team, but they’d gladly give up everything they've worked for to get Guanheng back, and Ten won’t let that happen if there’s a chance he can solve the issue on his own. 

SM likes to play these kinds of games- they think that by separating Ten from his team he’ll rush headlong right into their headquarters alone and immediately get himself captured. Technically they’re right, but Ten has Johnny, and that’s something they can’t have accounted for. He has inside information and assistance that, if he plays his cards right, might just let him pull this off. 

“Fine, okay,” he says. “I need info, then, to do this myself.” And weapons, but Ten’ll cross that bridge when this whole excursion starts looking slightly less like a suicide mission. 

“Shoot,” Johnny replies immediately, an ever-steady presence, and god, Ten loves him so much. 

“I need an exact location, I need to know security specs, I need to know how injured Guanheng is,” he rattles off.

Johnny scarcely even pauses. “You remember where the holding cells are? He’s 802. There’s a window near there I can disable the security on for you so you can climb in. Guards aren’t in front of his cell, but there’s the usual set in front of the entrance to the holding cell wing. He looked fine from what I saw, a little bruised but otherwise okay. They haven’t sent a doctor in or anything.”

“Cameras?”

“Can’t loop them for you, unfortunately.”

“I’ll be careful, then.” 

This whole thing is incredibly, stupidly risky. A lesser (read: more rational) agent would call it suicide. But Ten’s been defying every expectation for far too long to stop now. 

“And Johnny?” 

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

There’s a long, long beat of silence on the other end of the phone, broken only by the faint sound of what might be a watery inhale. “Of course.”

“I love you,” Ten tells him, tries to make his tone convey just how much he means it with every fiber of his being. 

“I love you too,” Johnny replies, and for a split second there’s something so mournful in his voice that it hurts a little bit to hear, but he covers it up so quickly Ten can’t be sure it was ever there at all. “I have to go now so no one will get suspicious. Stay safe.”

“You too,” Ten says, but Johnny’s already hung up the phone.

~0~0~0~

Fortunately, Ten’s done all of this before. Unfortunately, the last time Ten attempted a siege on SM headquarters he had the backup of six other people, one of whom was (and is) the best hacker in the world. Currently he has nothing on his side except his own sheer fury, which is unfortunately nowhere near as useful as a team of six world-class spies would be right about now. 

He has information and a way in, which makes his job a lot easier than it could have been, but pulling off any kind of operation directly in SM’s face should require a lot more than that. When he’d done this with Rainbow V, two months of meticulous planning had gone into it, and even then none of them had been overly hopeful about their chances of success.  

If Ten stops to really think about what he’s doing for more than a second at a time, he realizes he has a less than one percent chance of even making it to the holding cells, much less stealing Guanheng back and getting him out of the building safely. So he doesn’t think about it- he arms himself from one of Rainbow V’s many off-site weapon stashes and plans everything methodically, focusing only on whatever he’s doing in the moment. 

Getting to SM headquarters is easy, considering Ten’s had its location memorized since he was fifteen, and once he’s outside of the massive building and out of sight of the external cameras he pauses. He knows roughly where the holding cells are -they’re one of the few aboveground parts of the building, although the interrogation rooms are much deeper- and he circles around to that part of the building, taking care to stay in the shadows. 

The nighttime shift for camera-watching is well-known among SM agents as the easy one, where an agent can pass out in a desk chair for a few hours instead of actually doing anything, so Ten is hoping that whoever’s supposed to be watching the cameras tonight won’t be paying any attention to him. There’s a general air of confidence from most SM agents, too, that SM headquarters won't ever be successfully broken into. Sometimes guards will even let petty thieves and disgruntled ex-trainees into the building just to mess with them once they’re on SM turf. 

That idea should still hold true even now; even Rainbow V had staged their coup from inside, and Ten has never heard about anyone successfully breaking and entering into SM headquarters before. Sure enough, as he glances suspiciously at one of the cameras, it actively rotates in the opposite direction from him. 

So whoever’s on guard duty tonight wants to have a little fun. That works for him. Ten ignores the temptation to trot up to the offending camera and flip it off, let the whole of SM headquarters know what they’re dealing with. It would be stupid, he knows, but Ten’s itching for a fight in a way that leaves his blood scorching his veins with every heartbeat, that leaves him tense and hyperaware and almost desperate to take it all out on _something_. 

He finds the window Johnny unlocked for him easily enough -it’s left wide open, an egregious breach of protocol- and climbing up through it is all too easy. The hallway he finds himself in is deserted, and Ten takes in the sight of bleach-white walls and chrome accents he hasn’t seen in two years. God, he hates it here now. Everything is so _sterile_ and _robotic_.

An unbidden pang of gratitude for Dejun and his excellent interior design skills bubbles up in his chest, and the thought of him and Rainbow V makes Ten shrug away the discomfort and press forward. He’s doing this for them, after all. 

SM headquarters at this time of night is dead quiet- unsurprising, considering it’s five in the morning and anyone with sense is fast asleep. Even spies, who aren’t exactly known for their normal, healthy sleep schedules tend to be passed out this close to sunrise. There’s a reason the nighttime guard shifts are so generally detested by all but the staunchest of night owls. 

Ten, personally, is so wired that he wouldn’t be able to pass out if someone hit him over the head with a baseball bat. 

Which is good, because the first two guards he encounters would have killed him easily if he’d been any less alert. They’re playing cards when Ten catches sight of them, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor and chatting in hushed voices in a way that’s massively against the rules, but something Ten had done so many times as an SM agent himself that he has no room to judge. 

They’re observant, though, and one of them picks up on Ten’s presence instantly despite not even facing his way. He’s vaguely impressed- normally no one’s able to pick up on him when he’s being stealthy unless he wants them to. SM really does only hire the best of the best. 

So two minutes later he’s engaged in a full-on fight with them both, dodging punches and kicks and stabs in a way he hasn’t had to in a long while. He could just kill them -it’d be easy, really- but Ten refuses to take away the lives of two people with such obvious talent. They look no older than high schoolers, too, and one of them has the same fierce look in her eyes Renjun did when Ten had first met him.

One advantage Ten does have over them, though, is experience. He knows how SM combat training works, knows every move these kids have been taught. It’s easy enough to kick the girl’s legs out from under her while she’s lunging for a stab with her standard-issue knife, and her partner goes down just as fast with a clean headbutt that leaves him unconscious and with blood gushing out of his nose. 

“Sorry about this,” Ten tells the girl as he hits her head against the linoleum floor just hard enough to knock her unconscious. Hopefully she won’t have too much of a concussion. He sits the boy up against the wall to stop him from breathing his own blood in by accident and leaves. SM has excellent soundproofing just about everywhere in its building, and fights between agents are common enough that even on the off chance someone did hear Ten, chnaces are they’ll brush it off as nothing important. 

He makes his way through the halls of SM headquarters slowly, listening constantly for the presence of other people. It’s a little odd that whoever’s watching the cameras hasn’t noticed he’s not the typical trespasser they get and summoned backup by now, but maybe they’ve fallen asleep. Luck’s been on his side, lately- Ten can only hope it’ll stay with him tonight as well. 

There’s one last set of guards, the one Ten had known was coming. There are four of them, standing against every corner of the vestibule that leads to the holding cells. Although they’re there to stop any potential break-outs, they’ll do just as good a job at stopping a break- _in_. 

He’d come prepared, though. Ten doesn’t even peek into the room where the guards are waiting, professional and silent -older agents for sure- and instead pulls out a tranquilizer pistol. He won’t get all four of them with it, but even one out of the fight will be a massive advantage. 

Ten won’t keep the element of surprise for long, so he rushes headlong into the room. Shooting the gun three times yields only one hit, and the guard crumples to the ground. The other three move to incapacitate Ten instantly and he blocks the first punch smoothly. Honestly, these guards are easier than the teenagers he’d fought earlier- their blows are weaker, their movements sloppier. They’re either exhausted or their experience has made them grow soft. It takes him a scant couple of minutes to take down all three of them, which is embarrassingly fast for SM agents. 

Ten slides their unconscious bodies out of view of any potential passerby and yanks their standard-issue facemasks off to see just who he was fighting. There’s a chance, however unlikely, that one of the guards might be a member of NCT, as guard duty is a rotating chore every SM agent has to suffer through. Ten skims the four faces on the ground around him and sees no one he knows, relievingly. It would’ve been disappointing to know that any member of NCT had slipped that much in their combat prowess since he’s been gone. 

He leaves the guards behind him and approaches the door that leads to the holding cells, taking a moment to recall the entry code Johnny had texted to him after he’d hung up their call. He punches in the numbers and the door flashes green before unlocking. 

This all feels too easy. Ten’s thought that so many times this past month the words barely mean anything anymore, just another familiar itch in the back of his mind. He doesn’t question it, can’t be brought down by worry and “what ifs” right now. 

He makes it to cell 802 without any problems and inputs the same all-access code on the lock of the door. It clicks open without difficulty, and Ten slips into the room as quickly as he can-

It’s empty. 

This is definitely 802, so where’s Guanheng? Ten glances around warily, taking in how noticeably undisturbed the room is. It has a vaguely sterilized feel to it, like someone’s cleaned it fairly recently, but there’s no visible evidence anyone’s been held in this particular cell for a while. 

Ten glances at the double-sided mirror that takes up the entire right wall of the room- it’s standard issue in every SM holding cell- and something slots into place in his head. It doesn’t click, not quite, but it’s enough for Ten to realize he needs to get out of there as soon as possible. 

He whirls around, ready to make his escape-

-and Johnny’s standing there. Ten starts despite himself and reaches for his knife, a purely instinctive reaction, only to immediately relax upon processing who it is. Absently, Ten realizes he never closed the door of the cell behind him. Johnny does it for him, gently shutting the door and letting the electronic lock click shut.

“Johnny, you’re here,” Ten breathes, relieved. Everything just got a million times easier- they can find Guanheng together, and Johnny can help the two of them get out undetected. He hadn’t expected his help, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t take it when it’s offered. “Thank god.”

There’s a look in Johnny’s eyes that Ten has never seen before, not in all of their years of knowing each other. It should concern him a little, but Ten’s too busy coming up with a plan to think about it too hard. Maybe he’s just too tired to identify it. “Is Hendery in interrogation yet?” he asks. 

“No,” Johnny replies, voice quiet. He’s practically glaring in the direction of the double-sided mirror, apparently lost in thought. 

...Maybe Johnny’s the one who’s sleep-deprived after all. “We need to check all of the holding cells, then,” Ten says, and starts heading towards the door to do just that. Johnny doesn’t move, but Ten knows he’ll be right behind him. Maybe he’ll even hold the door open for him again, as silly as it would be at a time like this. 

“Ten?” Johnny asks, as Ten starts to punch in the code to the electronic lock. 

He doesn’t bother to turn around, too focused on getting the sequence right. “Yeah?”

“I’m so,  _so_ sorry,” Johnny tells him, voice the definition of anguish, and before Ten can breathe or blink or even think about turning around something sharp pricks the back of his neck, and just like that he’s falling to the floor and into unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look! It's a kind-of-proper convo :))))
> 
> (they sure need to have one, don't they?)

Ten wakes up considerably less disoriented than he’d have liked. Realization hits like a punch to the gut within ten seconds of his return to consciousness. 

The worst thing a person can do in a situation like this is to let their emotions overrule their logic, but Ten can’t help but let a streak of white-hot self-loathing course through him, fierce and biting and every single bit deserved. Ten’s been thinking something was off about every meetup he’d had with Johnny for a _month_ now, but he was too fucking stupid, too blindly lovestruck to pay attention to his own, - _well-known to be_ _infallible_ - instincts. 

It burns to realize just how much of an  _ idiot  _ he’s been. He’d blindly trusted Johnny, let himself get caught up in delusional ideas of love and safety, and he’d been subsequently played. Honestly, he’s surprised this hadn’t happened earlier. Ten’s been taught since the moment he’d become a spy that interpersonal attachments were dangerous, were weakness, and he’d never listened until it was far too late. 

(Somewhere, behind all of the anger that pops up in instinctive self-defense, there’s a deep, soul-crushing kind of sadness at the realization that none of the past month was real. So Ten stays angry to hide from the anguish, and he feels like a teenager all over again.)

He’s still in room 802, but currently Ten is tied to a chair and gagged. He doesn’t bother testing the strength of his binds- whoever tied him up did it so that he won’t be moving anywhere of his own volition anytime soon. 

He’s entirely at SM’s mercy, the one place he’d swore he’d never willingly be again. Yet he’d essentially handed himself over, walked directly into their trap, all because he was too stupid to realize he was being deceived by-

The door buzzes open and Ten glances up at it, watching as it slowly swings open to reveal Johnny, movements slow and eyes heavy with dark circles. All Ten feels when he sees him is  _ hurt _ so sharp and profound that he almost winces. 

“ _ You _ ,” Ten spits through his gag. He doesn’t know if his tone is dripping with fury or despair, isn’t sure there’s a way to separate the two anymore. 

Johnny understands despite the fabric strip tied around his mouth. “Me,” he replies, voice hollow. “I’m guarding you as punishment.” He approaches Ten and removes his gag with deft motions- a definite breach of protocol, but they’re both long past caring. 

Ten doesn’t need to ask what kind of punishment it is. SM likes to do things like that, especially to its own agents. Spies don’t need hearts to do their jobs, after all- they’re generally better off without them. Sometimes the heartbreak occurs naturally, but occasionally it needs a little manual interference to happen. (Or a lot, in this case, but SM’s never minded a challenge.)

Ten breaks the momentary quiet between them and asks the logical question first. The feelings are too much, too complex and messy to be analyzed at the moment. “Why?”

There’s a lot of ways that question could be taken- why did Johnny lie to him for a month straight? Why did this mission ever get approved in the first place? Why didn’t he leave with Ten two years ago?

(Why did he make so many promises if he never intended to keep them?)

“SM decided you were doing  _ too _ well,” Johnny explains, picking the safest, easiest option. “They’d hoped you would just die off after defecting, have a job gone wrong and-” he draws a finger across his throat instead of finishing the sentence. “But you have a higher mission success rate than every other SM unit and they’ve started losing contracts because of it.” 

There’s the slightest hint of something that could almost be labeled as pride in his voice. It’s an important reminder of something Ten had forgotten; while Johnny might be living under an SM contract, he’s by no means loyal. 

His hand was forced here- even if Johnny had for some unthinkable reason fallen out of love with Ten and didn't care for him anymore, he’s not a manipulative or malicious person by nature. He’d never do something like this to anyone, especially Ten, unless he had absolutely no other options. 

Ten wonders briefly what they threatened him with- hurting 127? Just killing Rainbow V instead of trying to bring them back? There are stories, whispers, of entire units having been used as coercive measures for certain agents in the past, being sent on more and more suicidal missions until they all died or whoever it was acquiesced to SM’s demands- something that generally happened almost immediately. 

They’d certainly gone after something he cared about- Johnny would’ve taken torture in a heartbeat over this if he’d had the choice. 

“How, then? How did you do all of this?” Johnny’s an excellent actor and a better liar- always has been. But Ten has known him for too long for Johnny to be able to get away with lying to him. 

That’s just the thing, though, he realizes- Johnny  _ did _ lie to him. Dozens of times over the last month he’d said things that didn’t make sense, that sounded ever so slightly off in their delivery, and Ten had always brushed it off as nothing. He was too willfully blind, too busy being led by his emotions to care that every time he’d met Johnny was only in the oddest of circumstances, that he only ever spoke in sweet nothings and half-truths. 

The worst part is that Ten  _ knew _ \- looking back on it, there were a million things he noticed that didn’t quite add up. But over and over he chose to ignore them, instead letting his whole world be swallowed up by Johnny. 

God, he’s so  _ stupid _ .

Johnny takes a long, slow breath in, looks absolutely devastated when he speaks next. “It wasn’t hard, really- you bought everything easier than anyone thought you would. Even me.” 

Ten doesn’t know quite what expression he makes in reaction to that, but judging by the way Johnny can’t meet his eyes, it looks at least half as pained as he feels. 

(He knows what that look in Johnny’s eyes earlier was, now- self-loathing so strong it's all-consuming.)

“So you lied, then,” Ten says slowly, over-pronouncing his words to stop his voice from cracking as he speaks. “About everything.”

Johnny takes in a quiet, shuddery breath, looks at the two-way mirror for a long moment. “Yes,” he answers, and if Ten’s heart weren’t already shattered glass in his chest, that would’ve crushed it all over again. 

But then Johnny looks at him again, gaze urgent like he’s begging for Ten to pick up on something, and he makes the herculean effort to force himself to process things logically for a moment. It’s easy to recall the way Johnny had done what he’d done, said what he’d said- no matter what the outcome of this ends up being, that simple  _ yes _ will haunt Ten’s dreams for the rest of his life. 

But then he realizes, as he thinks it over, that Johnny had  _ lied _ . It’s a good lie, sure to fool just about anyone, but Ten has four years of experience watching Johnny lie about just about everything under the sun. He knows how Johnny does it, knows even the subtlest shifts in his tone and body language. It’s laughably obvious once Ten bothers to think outside of his own emotions. 

One thing connects to another in his head, and that half-formed thought from earlier finally clicks into place. They’re being watched from behind the mirror, probably by Johnny’s superiors. 

According to protocol, they’re supposed to be there to supervise Ten’s “interrogation” and to observe him for future analysis. But if that was what they were really doing, Johnny wouldn’t be doing the questioning. He’s too soft for it, has too much of a conscience to be cruel and apathetic like the best interrogators are. 

No, they’re really evaluating Johnny- trying to see if he’s become compromised by spending so much time with Ten. 

So now Ten has a choice to make. He can hurt Johnny right back, spill the truth about their meetups and make him look like the compromised agent he doubtlessly is- or he can help him.

(It’s not much of a contest.)

Ten’s not known as an excellent infiltrator for nothing- he’s good at acting, at taking on personas as easily as some people change clothes. Playing too heartbroken here would be a mistake, as he can’t know that Johnny won’t incriminate himself by accident trying to comfort him, so he tries to keep his expression something closer to blank. He’s shutting down from the shock of it all, unable to process being deceived so completely and cleanly. 

Johnny looks him up and down nervously, clearly unsure if Ten’s gotten the message. He wishes he could tell him, just flash him a wink or even a meaningful glance, but he can’t take any chances. Ten needs to do this right or both of them will end up screwed. 

Logical questions are good, safe territory. Ten’s got no shortage of those. “How did you find us?” he asks. “You had eyes on me. How?” If by some miracle he makes it out of this alive, Rainbow V needs to know and fix the weak spot. 

Johnny shakes his head. He looks at Ten again, gaze calculating, uncertain. Ten tries his best to keep his expression bleeding distraught betrayal. “SM never did,” he admits. “That was a lie. We still can’t find you.” The  _ we _ comes out ever so slightly forced, and Ten prays he’s the only one who notices. 

“You knew I wasn’t home, though,” Ten points out. “When you called me.”

Johnny smiles wryly at that, the expression looking more pained than anything else. “I know  _ you _ , Ten. You never sleep full nights.”

And that’s really why this whole thing worked, isn’t it? SM knows perfectly well that Ten has exactly two real weaknesses, and they’d used both against him perfectly. They’d tricked him using the one person they knew he’d never question, never expect to betray him, and from there all they had to do was dangle a half-baked lie about his team being in danger for Ten to come running right back into SM’s clutches. 

SM knew him better than he'd ever thought, apparently. 

“So how’d you know about BlackBox, then?” That’s the one thing Ten can’t figure out- if he hadn’t been bugged, if they had no way of tracking Rainbow V, then there’s no way SM should’ve known about the Song assassination. It’s too strange of a coincidence for him to properly understand; there’s no way a plan this complex was only conceived after they’d met at the mansion, but how else could it have been?

Johnny sighs. “Ten, there is no BlackBox. That was SM. All of it was SM.” 

  
And Ten’s first reaction is vehement, instant denial, because that  _ can’t be _ . Sicheng wouldn’t fall for a bait like that, they would have noticed something was off earlier, there’s no possible way SM could have made up an entire weapons company-    
  
Except Ten knows SM. He knows what they’re capable of, knows how powerful their influence really is. A fake company and a few weapons contracts is nothing to them. 

“Why do you think all of those jobs were so easy? None of them were real,” he continues almost gently, and that’s all it takes for Ten to realize that he’s  _ right _ .

The weak shield of disbelief fades away and realization hits Ten like a bullet. He had thought they’d been -relatively at least- safe. Everyone in Rainbow V thought they were okay, relaxing in their apartment building and creating a new life for themselves, when all along SM had been waiting to force them back into the fold whenever it decided it wanted to. 

No one could've stopped this from happening eventually- if Ten hadn’t fallen for it, it would’ve been Sicheng tricked by Yuta, Lucas by Mark or Jungwoo, Kun by Taeyong. All of their old ties, their old weaknesses, twisted and used against them in the worst way possible. 

  
They’d never escaped their chains at all, just made them a little bit longer.    
  
Ten slumps in his chair for a moment, eyes blank and unseeing. He feels hollow, dead, shell-shocked- suddenly the part he was playing has become a little too real. Everything they’d worked for, everything they’d promised each other, all of it meant  _ nothing  _ because SM was just too strong.    
  
And Ten is distanced enough from his own mortality by now that the concept of his life being meaningless doesn’t really bother him, but it’s the thought of Rainbow V, his family, that gets him to crack. They’d been so happy after they’d escaped, finally able to pursue their talents and dreams together without the axe of SM hanging above their heads.    
  
He only realizes that he’s crying when Johnny steps forward and wipes the tears from his cheeks, motions gentle and sympathetic.    
  
And oh, how Ten wants to be mad at Johnny. He wants to be furious that Johnny’s done nothing to lie to him for a month, done nothing but reopen old wounds and trick him with smiles and humor and sweet affection that he’d always offered up so easily, but Ten understands. There is no better option here. Johnny was just trying to save the people he loves. That’s all he’s ever wanted to do, after all. Always in the middle, torn between his lover and his family.  And now Ten’s in the exact same boat. What a pair they make. 

It’s fine. Ten takes a second, pushes all of the hurt aside for the time being. Rainbow V can survive this, too. If Ten makes it out of all this alive, he’ll take Johnny with him this time and they’ll figure something out- they always do. Maybe they’ll even take SM out for good and steal away the rest of NCT for good measure. For now, though, Ten has a part to play. 

He shakes Johnny’s hands off of him- as much as Ten would like the comfort, actions like that are too suspicious. Johnny’s expression turns vaguely hurt, subtle enough that Ten knows he’s the only one who can pick up on it, and he can’t help but offer the briefest flash of a watery smile, tries to reassure him. 

“So what now, then? You kill me? You use me as bait for Rainbow V?” Ten would love to say that his team won’t come for him, but it’d be a ridiculous lie. Sicheng’s not stupid, and they’ve definitely noticed his absence at this point. They’re probably on their way to SM headquarters right now, ready to obliterate anything that stands between them and Ten. 

Johnny shrugs. “You think they’d tell me that?” 

For someone being actively investigated for treason to the SM cause, Johnny’s not doing the best job at playing his role. Ten gets it, really- he wouldn’t exactly be eager to serve the people who forced him into actively deceiving and betraying his lover either, but if he keeps this up, he’s going to land himself in a cell right next to Ten. 

  
“Yes, considering you’re still an SM agent,” Ten reminds him, sends the most pointed look he can Johnny’s way. 

“I don’t think anyone knows what to do with you yet,” Johnny amends. Message sent, message received. Ten feels a momentary pang of longing for the time when they could’ve communicated that same exchange with eye contact alone from across a room and tries to remind himself that soon, hopefully, they can start getting it all back. 

“So, what about-”

Somewhere else in the building, close enough that Ten can feel a rumble through the floors, an explosion goes off. 

Now, Ten’s not _entirely_ sure what caused that. It could be some other renegade team of spies far too competent for their own good, here to siege SM headquarters again to steal one of their own back. But that’s very much unlikely. 

Johnny glances at him knowingly, then looks at the two-way mirror as if waiting for directions. There’s a moment where everything is dead silent. Then an intercom, positioned in one corner of the ceiling, crackles to life.

“Agent Suh, you’re needed elsewhere,” a voice says, cold and robotic in quality. 

Johnny glances at the mirror again, then back at Ten. “Okay,” he says. He looks like he wants to say something to him, but anything even remotely sentimental would be yet another red flag for SM to pick up on. Instead he smiles, a quirk of lips so quick Ten barely catches it, and then he’s strolling out of the cell and letting the door swing shut behind him. Ten gets the vaguest impression that whoever needs “Agent Suh” isn’t going to be seeing him anytime soon. 

So he’s alone yet again, but Ten’s not worried. Judging by the ease in Johnny’s walk, they’ll definitely be seeing each other soon.

But for now, Ten has to wait. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so do you :)
> 
> But only for like six hours lol, then the last two chapters will come out!
> 
> (It's up to you to decide how much of every single one of their past interactions was real- some were very much genuine and some were not.)


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The SM CoupTM Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Post the last three chapters over the course of a few days to space it out a little bit
> 
> Me to me: Do it all at once just because you can

He doesn’t have to sit idle for long, fortunately. The lock on his door buzzes open no more than ten minutes after Johnny had left to reveal Dejun, clad in a gray outfit of likely deceiving sleekness and elegance and wearing a scarily intense expression. 

“Ten!” he exclaims and rushes over, tension melting off his face with every step he takes. “You’re okay!”

Ten can’t help but smile. It’s exhausted and impossibly stressed probably doesn’t look too much like one, but he’s never not happy to see Dejun. “Yeah,” he says, and it’s not really true, but the way Dejun’s face brightens makes the lie worth it. “They didn’t hurt me.”

It’s odd, though, that Dejun, who normally doesn’t like to be in the thick of such large-scale combat, would be rescuing Ten like this. He’d definitely had to go through at least the four holding cell guards to get here, and while he’s more than capable of doing that easily, it’s not something he’d normally volunteer for.  “Why are  _ you _ here, though?” Ten asks him curiously. “Shouldn’t you be off sniping somewhere?”

Dejun is often their sniper in larger-scale operations like this, due to his inexplicable love for high places and the fact that he’s by far the most patient member of Rainbow V. It’s odd for him to be in the middle of the fight like this when someone a little more combative (and Rainbow V has no shortage of people fitting that description) would be better suited for the dangerous task of personally rescuing Ten. 

“Everyone decided I’m the best choice, because I’m the only one who won’t kill you on sight for the shit you’ve pulled,” Dejun tells him, and Ten winces. He definitely deserves that. He’s going to have a lot of groveling to do back at their apartment if they make it out of this alive. 

“I know, I’m- I’m so, so sorry,” he replies a bit miserably. Ten means the words with every fiber of his being, but they still ring hollow in the face of everything he’s done. 

But Dejun just smiles kindly at him like the too-good-for-this-world person he is and moves to untie him from the chair. “I forgive you,” he says. “Everyone else will too, they’re just mad you didn’t tell us anything.” 

Ten knows full well what he’s done doesn’t warrant such quick forgiveness, and the easy way Dejun says it makes a fierce surge of gratitude well up in his chest. What he’s done to deserve to have people so wonderful care about him so deeply, he doesn’t know. 

The ropes snap quickly, and Ten takes only the briefest moment to stretch his stiff limbs before he and Dejun are running out of the holding cells. Ten doesn’t know where they’re going and doesn’t stop to ask; he trusts Dejun to stick to whatever plan Rainbow V has. 

SM headquarters during a raid is a very special kind of organized chaos. Since there’s only been one actual internal conflict since SM’s creation -their main defense against it is that most people are simply too scared to try- there isn’t really a protocol in place. The first time Rainbow V had staged their coup, SM had ended up picking a few of their worst-performing units and giving them a mission: detain the insurgents. 

It hadn’t gone well, of course, and although Rainbow V had done their best to ensure there were as few deaths as possible, the lesser-ranked agents tended to be so desperate for approval that there was all too often no way to keep them alive but still effectively debilitate them. 

Everyone else in headquarters, interestingly enough, had decided to stay in their respective lanes and not get involved in the conflict. Back during their first raid Sicheng had at one point passed several dorms of older units, and he’d seen some teams calmly playing cards despite the sounds of gunfire and alarms blaring through the intercoms all around them. One unit had even greeted him cheerfully and wished him luck. 

That was half of the reason Rainbow V had managed to do what they’d done so easily, actually. Most units -especially the older ones- couldn’t care less about the fate of SM so long as the safety of their members wasn’t at risk. 

This time, at least, SM seems to have sprung for a little more of a defense. It’s been two years, and there are a number of new units with something to prove who likely jumped at the chance to gain some reputability. 

Two such agents corner Ten and Dejun almost immediately, sneering and doing their absolute best to look intimidating. One of them is holding his knife laughably incorrectly. Ten scoffs a little, barely even bothers to lower himself into a proper fighting stance. SM might only hire the best, but there’s still a massive gap between the best of the best and the worst of the best. 

Ten and Dejun lock eyes for the briefest of moments, and in a second they’re charging the two agents, moving like one body. Ten sweep-kicks one’s legs out from under one and Dejun slams a boot into his solar plexus; Dejun manages to disarm the one with the knife and Ten immediately kicks him in the face so hard he passes out on the spot. 

The whole ordeal takes less than two minutes. Easy. Ten grins at Dejun and receives a brilliant smile in return, both of them high on adrenaline and the indescribably incredible feeling of being in total sync with another person. 

They set off again, come face-to-face with three more agents wearing cheap facemasks in some poor attempt at making themselves seem scary. They don’t even have to look at each other before they’re moving forward and taking them out smoothly, finishing each other’s moves and watching each other’s backs in the instinctive way only spies who are closer than soulmates ever can. 

Ten loves his team so much it’s beyond description, loves the exhilarating feeling that comes with just fighting by their sides. He can’t keep the smile off his face as he fights and runs through SM headquarters, sticking close to Dejun’s side. Ten knows this is a serious occasion, an all-important fight that will end either in their freedom or their deaths, but it’s times like this that make him remember exactly why he loves being an agent so much. 

All around them alarms blare and the power flickers on and off every thirty seconds, something that’s surely Sicheng’s doing. They keep moving, taking out guards as they go, and so far things are progressing smoothly. Ten has yet to see another member of Rainbow V, but Dejun doesn’t seem concerned, so Ten doesn’t bother to question it. 

They’re running down yet another stark white hallway Ten no longer remembers the purpose of when Ten catches sight of a face he recognizes. The person is clearly heading elsewhere, but they skid to a stop upon seeing Ten and Dejun. Ten’s first instinct is nervousness, worried that this impromptu reunion will turn into a shootout, but his fears are immediately proved unfounded. 

“Hey Xiaojun!” Jaehyun yells, having evidently noticed him first. “V’s meeting up in the SM head office.” He looks surprisingly upbeat and well despite the chaos all around them, but that’s just Jaehyun- always calm and untempered by even the worst of twists, always steady. Ten’s missed him dearly. 

Jaehyun finally glances at Ten and looks him up and down for a long moment. Then he smiles, dimples on full display, and hands Ten his gun. “Good to have you back,” is all he says before darting off to who-knows-where. 

  
Ten doesn’t prefer guns, finds them loud and their need for ammo an obnoxious handicap, so he hands it to Dejun almost immediately, who accepts it eagerly. “What was that all about?” He asks Dejun as they set off further down the hallway.    
  
Dejun shoots him a glance. “Right, you don’t know.”   
  
“No?”    
  
“Well, we kind of sort of turned the rest of NCT-“ a bullet embeds itself in the wall above Dejun’s head and he smoothly blows out the brains of the person who’d shot it- “into our allies for now.” A pause. “Well, not Dream, because they’re out on a mission, but 127.”    
  
“They’re defecting too?” Ten’s heart leaps. If they by some miracle pull this off, everyone in NCT can be together again, free from SM control. He and Johnny can be together again. No more dark cloud hanging over their heads, no more constantly watching their backs.   
  
“Don’t know, honestly,” Dejun replies. “I think they’re scared to go all the way.”

Ten will drag every last one of them out of this building himself if he has to- he’s not making the same mistake twice. 

He’s so lost in the momentary mental image of NCT’s potential freedom that Ten nearly runs into someone as he turns a corner. He recoils, but they grab his arms in a touch far too gentle to be that of an enemy. 

“Johnny,” Ten says, surprised. He’d known he would see him again at some point, but he'd assumed it would be after the conflict settled rather than in the midst of it.

“Ten,” Johnny replies, and there’s so much sheer _ feeling _ in that one word Ten can’t quite pick any one specific emotion out.

“I’m gonna let you two talk privately,” Dejun decides. To Johnny he offers a short bow, and to Ten he just smiles. “Come up to the SM head office when you’re done, Ten.”

Ten nods his thanks and Xiaojun slips away soundlessly. 

“We can’t take too long, Rainbow V needs me,” Ten says. His hands are gripping Johnny’s arms in the same way the other is holding Ten’s, leaving them inextricably locked together. 

“That’s okay, I just-” 

Ten notes with surprise that Johnny’s eyes are wet with tears. He squeezes Johnny’s arms tighter in reassurance, and Johnny offers a weak smile. “Ten, I’m so, so sorry for everything- they threatened to hurt 127 and I just, I thought you wouldn’t even buy it in the first place-”

“-Johnny. How much of it was real?” Ten has to know the truth, if there’s even a chance of them being able to repair themselves when this is all over. 

“I lied where I had to, but every time I said I loved you, I meant it.” 

Ten looks him up and down, analyzes every facet of his body language and tone to check for a lie. He doesn’t find one. He opens his mouth to speak, but now it’s Johnny’s turn to cut him off.

“Ten, you don’t have to forgive me. You shouldn’t forgive me, even. You have to know that if I had any other choice that would’ve kept both you and 127 safe, I would’ve taken it. But everything I said in the coffeeshop, everything I’ve said about  _ us _ , all of that was true. I love you, Ten. I haven’t stopped loving you since the second I realized I did back when we were teenagers.”

Logically, Ten knows he shouldn’t forgive him- he should never again trust someone who’d lied to him so easily and for so long, but Ten’s never been very logical when it comes to Johnny. 

He understands, too, the lengths Johnny would go to for 127, because he’d do the exact same thing for Rainbow V without a second thought. He and Johnny love each other beyond all sense, all reason, all logic, and there’s nothing in the world Ten believes could tear them apart for good. But Ten loves Rainbow V enough to win wars for them, enough to storm SM headquarters alone to keep them safe, and should those two absolutes ever cross, Ten doesn’t doubt that he’d probably make the same choice Johnny did. 

It might take time for the trust to come back, but the love between them has never wavered, and Ten’s already forgiven him. 

“I love you too,” Ten says, voice soft but steady with conviction.

“I love you more,” Johnny replies, voice nearly cracking under the weight of the sheer  _ joy  _ in it. Shifting his grip on Ten until his hands are resting on his hips, Johnny yanks him into an impossibly tight hug. Ten hugs back with just as much force, and for a moment they just cling to each other in the hallway as alarms blare all around them. 

“You should go meet up with V,” Johnny says into his hair, and Ten leans back just enough to look at him properly.

“Stay safe out here, then,” Ten tells him. “The moment I’m done I’ll come find you.”

“You too,” Johnny answers, and then he’s pressing a kiss to Ten’s forehead and stepping back. “Go get ‘em, babe.”

Ten blows him a kiss and goes to do just that. 

~0~0~0~

There’s a reason spies aren’t supposed to indulge in interpersonal attachments. Ten knows why probably better than anyone else. But he also knows why the exact opposite is just as true. Attachments are a form of weakness, yes, but they can also form bonds stronger than anything any contract or amount of money can replicate. They’re dangerous, uncontrollable, and one of the few things in the world most agents would gladly die for. 

  
And he’s gotta say, staring down the head of SM with the rest of Rainbow V behind him for the second time is quite possibly the second best experience of his life. If this is where the so-called evils of attachments have led him, well, he’s not exactly complaining.   
  
(It’s sappy and ridiculous, but the best experience is Ten’s first kiss with Johnny. He’ll treasure that until he dies.) 

Ten had a two-minute reunion with Rainbow V outside of the SM head office, one that consisted of a lot of hugging and hissed threats about just what would happen if he ever even thought about pulling something like this again. They’ll have a lot more talking to do (read: Ten’s going to get the lecture of a lifetime) when they get back to their apartment, but for now everyone’s still too high on adrenaline and singularly focused on their mission to be genuinely angry at him. 

They’d entered the head office in a single-file line, following Kun and spreading themselves out across the room to purposefully take up as much space as possible. Dejun is pointing his pistol at the man’s head, expression scarily apathetic. His hand is statue-still. Since the head of SM is a position generally given to a bureaucrat rather than a spy, the man keeps shooting anxious glances at the gun as Kun casually sits down in the chair in front of his desk. 

He opens his mouth, looking ready to start some long-winded movie villain monologue, but Kun beats him to it.

“Let us leave,” he says, a verbatim repetition of what he’d said two years ago. “For real, this time. Or we’ll kill you.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” the man scoffs. “If SM falls, it would be chaos. Gangs would run wild in the streets, governments would become even more tyrannical-”

“-And we’d be free of one more manipulative, horrible spy organization,” Kun replies coolly. This is his element- he’s spent his whole life learning to read and manipulate people. No one’s ever prepared for Kun, who’s normally so gentle and friendly, to suddenly open his mouth and become as cold and calculating as a war strategist. 

Kun’s a born leader, no matter how much as he likes to protest otherwise. Even the head of SM can’t stand in his way, not when Rainbow V is on the line. “I’ll even let you suggest some terms, if you have any,” he offers, voice falsely kind. It’s obvious to everyone in the room that he’s throwing the man a bone, and it’s only out of pity. 

“I’ll let WayV-” 

“-Rainbow V,” Yangyang corrects instantly, shoots the man a venomous glare. He and SM have a particularly fraught history- Yangyang had been effectively snatched away from the street racing scene as a teenager rather than ethically scouted and hired. The only reason he’d stayed with NCT at all, initially, was because SM threatened to have him arrested for his illegal racing if he tried to escape. 

There’s a long pause as the two stare each other down. Yangyang’s head is held high and proud, entirely unwilling to yield. Ten feels a bubble of pride rise up in his chest at the sight. He’s grown so much since Ten has known him, learned to weaponize his anger and posturing skill in a way that’s truly terrifying.

Sure enough, the head of SM relents. “- I’ll let Rainbow V,” he amends begrudgingly, “stay free. No more intervention by SM. I’ll sign a damn contract if you want. Even give you collateral.”

“And the rest of NCT?” Sicheng cuts in, voice and expression carefully blank. There’s only one correct answer to his question- the head of SM has to know it too. 

“No,” the man answers, and Ten’s almost impressed by his stupidity. “ _ No _ . They’re the best unit SM has, I can’t lose them-”

“You certainly don’t treat them as such,” Kun replies. “And after what you forced Johnny into, I doubt he’s exactly thrilled to still be contracted with SM anymore.”

“You might have a mutiny on your hands, if you aren’t careful,” Sicheng adds lightly. 

“I’ll take my damn chances,” the man hisses. “I need them. You can have your freedom and go, but you aren’t taking NCT.”

“We  _ are _ NCT,” Yukhei speaks for the first time, expression impossible to read. “We always have been.”

The man doesn’t quite look like he knows what to say to that. For all of SM’s constant pushing of how their spy units are supposed to “live, train, and act as one,” and how they’re supposed to be “closer than family,” they don’t seem to know what to do when a unit decides it cares more about its members than its company. Honestly, it’s never ceased to amaze Ten that something like this hasn’t happened earlier. Apparently only Rainbow V has that perfect cocktail of competence, love for each other, and sheer stupidity needed to go up against SM and make it out alive. 

“Fine, fine!” the man yells at last, face an alarming shade of what’s rapidly approaching purple. “You can all go! But I want him.” Ten finds a finger pointed directly in his face, the head of SM’s desperate eyes locked on him. “He’s the best one of you anyways.”

Kun and Sicheng glance at each other, then at him, and very pointedly don’t say anything. Ten meets their eyes and smirks, and they offer a subtle quirk of lips right back. 

He lets the silence build for a moment, lets the man think he might be legitimately considering his offer. Then he laughs, the sound bright and melodic. “You really are an idiot,” he tells him. “If you think for even a  _ second _ that they’d let ever me go-” he gestures to the rest of Rainbow V for effect, and they offer him encouraging nods and sly grins- “You’re insane.” 

“But you, you-” he looks almost feral at this point, like a cornered animal. It’s the same look in people’s eyes Ten sees when he holds knives to their throat- terrified and desperate, almost inhuman in the sheer intensity of its emotion. 

“Since you have yet to offer an acceptable demand, I’m going to assume you don’t have any,” Kun cuts him off briskly. “Which means we’re leaving, and Sicheng will be in touch with you to inform you of the collateral we’ve chosen.”

“You can’t-” the man begins, floundering as he tries and fails to finish his sentence. For someone who’s supposed to be the head of the most elite spy organization in the world, he's surprisingly ineloquent. Maybe it’s the gun pointed at his head. 

“We can, and we are,” Yangyang practically gloats, smirking. 

“I wouldn’t recommend trying to stop us,” Guanheng adds. 

“For your sake, you’d better hope we never see each other again,” Sicheng sneers, and with his pleasant warning the meeting is adjourned. 

Kun stands up, offers him one of his patented plastic smiles, and turns to face the rest of Rainbow V. Xiaojun very, very slowly lowers his gun, pointedly keeping steady eye contact with the head of SM until he uncomfortably turns away. 

The smile Kun gives the six of them is very much real and incredibly bright, and they find themselves grinning to match it. He moves to the door and holds it open for everyone, suddenly back to friendly, lovable Qian Kun instead of the stone-cold head of the world’s best spy unit. 

Ten slips out first, intent on finding the rest of NCT. He doesn’t have to look very hard, as they’re all waiting just outside of the door, clumped together and talking quietly.

The first person Ten sees is Johnny, because he’s never quite stopped looking for him first in every room he enters. He looks exhausted, and he’s nursing the start of a black eye and a cut on his cheek, but the smile he gives Ten is nothing short of radiant. 

“Are we-?” he starts, voice heavy with anticipation.

Ten doesn’t respond, can’t do anything but run up and kiss him. It’s rushed and messy and just like every kiss they’d ever shared after a successful mission, where half the time they were shaking so badly from adrenaline crashes they could barely hold each other without their fingers slipping away of their own accord. 

It’s euphoric, it’s electric, it’s every single  _ I love you _ Ten’s missed telling him for two years. It’s perfect beyond description. 

Someone in the crowd of NCT members wolf whistles -Ten would be willing to bet  _ money _ it’s Donghyuck, the little demon- and Ten flips them off without pause. 

“As of now, you’re all officially released from your SM contracts,” Kun announces, stepping out of the SM head office. “Unless for some reason you don’t want to be, in which case I’m sure they’ll be happy to take you back.”

One person lets out a whoop, and within seconds everyone else follows, making as much noise as they can just for the hell of it. It’s an uproar, unsurprisingly. There’s applause, a “thank  _ fucking  _ god!” and someone kicking the wall in a steady drumroll just to add to the commotion. 

Ten smiles so wide it hurts a little and curls into Johnny’s side. There’s a reason NCT is known as the most chaotic, dysfunctional group SM has -had- and Ten’s desperately missed their delightful anarchy. 

Finally, when the noise dies down a little bit, Taeyong steps forward to talk to Kun. The moment he does so the room comes to an instant hush, everyone instantly deferring to the authority of their leader. Even the rest of Rainbow V, who  _ only _ answer to Kun, give him their respect in the way it feels only right to do with Taeyong. 

“Although no one’s complaining about being freed, NCT doesn’t really have anywhere else to go,” Taeyong points out, biting his lip in subtle worry. “SM headquarters is everyone’s home.”

“I have some options we could talk through, if you’d like,” Kun offers, a little over-formal in the way he tends to get around Taeyong. They hadn’t spent much time together even before Rainbow V left SM due to their busy schedules, and Kun was always in awe of Taeyong’s leadership skills and general impressiveness during what little time they did see each other, especially since much of that was in formal settings where Taeyong was expected to appear cool and professional.

Ten, who knows how Taeyong acts when he doesn’t have the eyes of his superiors glued to him, finds Kun’s behavior hilarious. But Taeyong just smiles at Kun widely, doesn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by the formality. “Yeah, that sounds good.” 

“In the meantime,” Johnny whispers, and Ten glances at him curiously, “You want tteokbokki? There’s a nice little restaurant that opened up near here while you were gone.”

He should stay for whatever discussion comes next, knows his input is valuable and that resettling NCT should be his first priority. 

But honestly? Tteokbokki sounds fantastic, and Ten’s broken a million and one rules for Johnny already. What’s one more?

(They have a lot to talk about, an entire relationship to resettle. They have a million topics they can’t bring up without hurting each other that will have to be discussed, two years of missed history that will have to be learned. But if they’ve made it this far and still kept themselves and their family intact, Ten’s confident they can tackle just about anything.)

“You’re buying,” he says, and Johnny rolls his eyes but doesn’t protest. 

“The things I do for you,” he groans, interlacing their fingers and starting to slip off towards the door. Guanheng, noticing their departure, catches Ten’s eye and grins, a knowing thing that Ten takes as a blessing and returns easily.

“The things  _ I  _ do for  _ you _ ,” Ten corrects. “Half of this coup was just for you, you know.”

“The things we do for love,” Johnny compromises with a grin, and pulls Ten out the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just an epilogue left, everyone! We're almost done :')


	9. Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some final closure for our lovely spy boyfriends :)

The liberation of NCT goes a little bit like this-

NCT Dream returns from a mission in Taiwan to find themselves entirely free of SM control. Unsure of what to do with their newfound freedom, but adamant about wanting to stay together no matter what, they start looking for other employment opportunities. They find one in Miroh, a small-scale organization with a specialization in taking down corrupt governments. The company is vetted thoroughly by Sicheng and Mark before it’s even considered as an option, but their code of ethics is so strict and Miroh’s treatment of the spies under their command is so good that even Mark and Sicheng have to grudgingly admit it passes their standards. A contract is signed within three months, and the newly-rechristened Dream has since become an integral part of Miroh’s operations. They love having the chance to do something unabashedly  _ good _ with their immense talent, and it shows in every perfect mission and the near-constant smiles on their faces. 

NCT 127’s path forward is a little less smooth. Everyone wants something different, so the options in their initial discussions range from transplanting themselves to America to giving up the spy life altogether. In the end, it’s decided that 127 will continue to be a team of spies, but they’ll exist as a group of free agents instead of as a collective unit. It gives them a lot more independence- they can live anywhere, do anything, take any contract they desire. It’s more autonomy than SM would have ever given them, even if they’d somehow managed to make it to retirement. They’re using that freedom liberally, too- Jungwoo has been on three separate trips to Hawaii in the past six months alone.

Rainbow V -still entirely unwilling to take back the name WayV- stays mostly the same. They’re still a team of spies among the best of the best, with a higher mission success rate than most units could ever dream of.

(There’s one main difference, though-)

“Could you two please do that  _ anywhere else _ ?” 

Ten grins lazily at Doyoung from where he’s sprawled over Johnny on the couch. His hair is mussed, there’s a very visible hickey on his neck, and his eyes are positively sparkling with mirth. “Why, whatever do you mean?” 

Johnny snickers, only attempting to stifle it when Doyoung shoots a poisonous glare his way. 

“It’s six in the morning and this isn’t even your apartment,” he grumbles. “I just want coffee.”

“I don’t see how we’re stopping you from getting any,” Ten says innocently, making no move to sit up or make himself look any more decent. 

“You two are disgusting,” Doyoung huffs, but he turns away to go start brewing hot water in the adjacent kitchen anyway. 

“Love you too, Doyoungie,” Johnny calls after him, the slightest hint of a laugh in his voice. 

(See, after their initial escape from SM two years ago, Rainbow V had moved their base of operations to an apartment complex Kun had bought with a fraction of his massive inheritance. Most of it had sat empty for the two years they’d been living in it, as seven people couldn’t possibly take up that much space, but now-)

The kettle starts to whistle, and right as Doyoung reaches for it, it’s snatched from his hands by a dead-looking Sicheng. Doyoung opens his mouth to protest. 

“Unless you’re going to take over the next twelve hours of intel work I have ahead of me, I wouldn’t say anything,” Sicheng advises him darkly, and Doyoung wisely shuts his mouth as quickly as he’d opened it. 

“You should definitely sleep,” Johnny says, looking concerned. To Ten, he whispers, “How do you make him sleep?”

“I don’t,” Ten scoffs. “He’d kill me if I tried.” Sicheng on a mission is an unstoppable force, and only Dejun has the persistence and bleeding-heart conscience strong enough to be the immovable object that can stop him. Unfortunately, he’s currently in Germany with Yangyang, Yukhei, Renjun, and Mark. 

They’ve been doing that more and more lately- NCT has become more of one team with twenty-one parts instead of three separate units under one name. It’s complicated and sometimes problematic, but Ten can't deny that he loves it. Everyone’s different, each with their own strengths and quirks and styles, but they’re all so wildly competent that every mission brings only the best kind of adrenaline rush with it, the kind that makes Ten so, so grateful for what he has. 

“Babe, if you don’t go take a nap I’ll hit you over the head with your own computer and  _ make _ you pass out,” Yuta says lightly, appearing from nowhere as he’s wont to do. He folds Sicheng into a delicate hug and rests his chin on the other’s shoulder. 

That had been a surprise for everyone- it had been common knowledge back when Sicheng was in 127 that he and Yuta were far closer than they should be, but there had never been any hard evidence that they were anything more than just absurdly close friends. Apparently, though, Yuta and Sicheng had been dating for years, even managing to maintain their relationship long-distance after Rainbow V defected through a careful schedule of meetups and discreet video calls. 

(That had been a fun discussion- Sicheng had laughed at Ten for a solid fifteen minutes when he’d tried to rationalize everything he’d done by blaming his love for Johnny.  _ If you’d just told me _ , he’d said, all high-and-mighty and obnoxiously right,  _ I could’ve helped you two and we’d have avoided all of this _ . 

_ You wouldn’t have gotten Yuta back, though _ , Ten had shot back, and all Sicheng had done was grin.  _ True, but you’re still an idiot. _ ) 

Despite having a smile that could cure cancer and being the only person on earth Sicheng is soft for, however, Yuta is no match for his boyfriend’s workaholic tendencies. “Don’t even try it,” Sicheng warns him, but any intimidation factor he might have had is negated by the way he melts into Yuta’s arms.

“Why are any of you even in my apartment in the first place?” Doyoung complains. “There are five people in this room right now, and somehow only  _ two _ of them actually live here.”

“The Rainbow V floors are boring with so many people gone,” Ten replies.

“Your couch is more comfortable than the one Taeyong bought,” Johnny adds. “Also, I was hoping you’d make us breakfast.”

“And Sicheng’s been working in my room because he says the internet’s better in there,” Yuta finishes. “Also, I live here, so I’m allowed to be in my own kitchen.”

Doyoung just lets out a long-suffering sigh. 

“What do you want for breakfast?” he asks after a moment. 

He receives cheers instead of answers and huffs, turning to the stove. “Fine. You’re all eating what I wanted to have, then.”

“I’m sure it’ll taste fantastic,” Johnny says encouragingly, before turning back to Ten with a grin. 

“Taeyong mentioned a recon mission in Rome last week,” he begins, “And since it’s almost our anniversary-”

“-Why yes, Johnny, I’d love to go on a vacation to Rome with you,” Ten finishes, smiling back just as widely. Anyone else might find it offensive that their anniversary will likely be spent spying on a drug lord, but for Ten the prospect of going on a mission with Johnny while they're in Rome merely adds to the fun. 

“Awesome, I’ll let Taeyong know,” Johnny replies, pecking Ten gently on the lips. Ten easily loops his arms around his neck and kisses him deeply, shifting on his lap to get a better angle-

“-Okay, the two of you need to get away from my kitchen,” Doyoung decides. “Johnny, go buy me eggs.” 

“You don’t have eggs?” Ten separates from Johnny to ask. “Even the  _ Dreamies _ have eggs in their kitchen.”

“Only because Taeyong goes shopping for them half the time,” Johnny says with a snort. 

“I need  _ more _ eggs,” Doyoung amends with a pointed glare at Ten, who just smiles pleasantly. “So go buy me some or you’re not getting breakfast.”

Johnny gently pushes at Ten until he disentangles from his boyfriend and stands up. “Give me fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you,” Doyoung replies, already turning back to the stove to say something to Yuta, leaning against the counter so he can “help.” 

“Stay safe,” Ten says jokingly. Anyone who wants to go after Johnny on his way to the convenience store should be more scared for themselves rather than the other way around.

“Always,” says Johnny, offering a two-fingered salute as he heads out the door.

Ten watches him leave, takes in the sight of Yuta and Doyoung cheerfully bickering in front of the stove as Sicheng sips his coffee, and wonders how on earth he’s gotten so lucky. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! This is long, I apologize, but I have a lot of thoughts about this fic I want to share because it’s my baby :)
> 
> This was supposed to be a dumb, funny fic (and only 5k words, can you imagine?) about Ten and Johnny having the most ridiculous series of stupid coincidences and falling in love along the way, and then I out of nowhere decided to make it sad and much more complicated (rip the 800 word google doc I now have called “Good Lines I can’t Use T-T ”). I like it better this way, I think, and I had so much fun bringing this fic to life.
> 
> I have been incredibly unsure about this fic from the second I posted the first chapter until now. It’s very much out of my comfort zone -long, sad, and not a oneshot- and I worked really hard to make sure everything made sense and fit together well in a believable way. I hope I managed to achieve that, or at the very least made something enjoyable enough to read that it doesn’t matter. 
> 
> I’m absurdly, indescribably grateful to everyone who’s given me a comment or kudos, because when I’m sure that my writing is bad and that this fic sucks I go and read them and remind myself that everything’s okay. Thank you all for being my inspiration and encouragement, more so than you can possibly know. 
> 
> Also, if anyone’s interested, I might write more in this universe! There’s a _lot_ in my head about these characters that never made it into this fic that I’d be happy to explore someday.
> 
> To conclude, though, because this is far too long already, thank you all so so so much for reading and supporting this little fic of mine, and I really hope you’ve enjoyed the ride <3
> 
> (Also, I want everyone to know I wrote a lot of this story in one google doc called TEN outta TEN for the longest time)
> 
> ((Also thank you for putting up with my screaming about this, Luci! I love you and your constant encouragement is more than I deserve haha))
> 
> (Edit: there's not much on it yet, but my [Twitter ](https://twitter.com/CelSilences)  
> and my [ CuriousCat ](https://curiouscat.me/CelestialSilences))


End file.
